Letters Of Anton Chekhov To His Family And Friends With Biographical Sketch

LETTERS
OF ANTON CHEKHOV

TO HIS
FAMILY AND FRIENDS

WITH BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

TRANSLATED BY

CONSTANCE GARNETT

gork

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1920

All rights reset ved

COPYRIGHT, 1920,
BT THE MACMTLLAN" COMPANY

Set up and printed Published, February, 1920

15213

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

Of the eighteen hundred and ninety letters
published by Chekhov's family I have chosen for
translation these letters and passages from letters
which best to illustrate Chekhov's life, character and
opinions. The brief memoir is abridged and
adapted from the biographical sketch by his brother
Mihail. Chekhov's letters to his wife after his mar-
riage have not as yet been published.

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MRflt6IE-MELLOK

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

N 1841 a serf belonging to a Russian nobleman pur-
;hased his freedom and the freedom of his family
or 3,500 roubles, being at the rate of 700 roubles
L soul, with one daughter, Alexandra, thrown in
or nothing. The grandson of this serf was Anton
Chekhov, the author; the son of the nobleman
ras Tchertkov, the Tolstoyan and friend of
^olstoy.

There is in this nothing striking to a Russian,
ut to the English student it is sufficiently signif-
:ant for several reasons. It illustrates how recent

growth was the educated middle-class in pre-
evolutionary Russia, and it shows, what is perhaps
lore significant, the homogeneity of the Russian
eople, and their capacity for completely changing
icir whole way of life.

Chekhov's father started life as a slave, but the
on of this slave was even more sensitive to the
irts, more innately civilized and in love with the
lings of the mind than the son of the slave-

G

wner. Chekhov's father, Pavel Yegorovitch, had

passion for music and singing; while he was still

serf boy he learned to read music at sight and

) play the violin. A few years after his freedom

ad been purchased he settled at Taganrog, a town

n the Sea of Azov, where he afterwards opened a

Colonial Stores."

4 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

Their mother, on the other hand, told the children

stories of real life, describing how she had travelled

all over Russia as a little girl, how the Allies had

bombarded Taganrog during the Crimean War, and

how hard life had been for the peasants in the

days of serfdom. She instilled into her children a

hatred of brutality and a feeling of regard for all

who were in an inferior position, and for birds and

animals.

Chekhov in later years used to say: "Our talents
we got from our father, but our soul from our
mother."

In 1875 the two elder boys went to Moscow.
After their departure the business went from bad
to worse, 'and the family sank into poverty.

In 1876 Pavel Yegorovitch closed his shop, and
went to join his sons in Moscow. While earning
their own living, one was a student at the University,
and the other a student at the School of Sculpture
and Painting. The house was sold by auction, one
of the creditors took all the furniture, and Chekhov's
mother was left with nothing. Some months
afterwards she went to rejoin her husband in Mos-
cow, taking the younger children with her, while
Anton, who was then sixteen, lived on in solitude
at Taganrog for three whole years, earning his own
living, and paying for his education at the high
school.

m He lived in the house that had been his father's
m the family of one Selivanov, the creditor who
had bought it, and gave lessons to the latter's
nephew a Cossack. He went with his pupil to the
latter s house in the country, and learned to ride
and shoot. During the last two years he was very

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 5

ond of the society of the high-school girls, and used
o tell his brothers that he had had the most delight-
ul flirtations.

At the same time he went frequently to the theatre
md was very fond of French melodramas, so that
le was by no means crushed by his early struggle
or existence. In 1879 he went to Moscow to enter
he University, bringing with him two school-fel-
ows who boarded with his family. He found his
'ather had just succeeded in getting work away
'rom home, so that from the first day of his arrival
le found himself head of the family, every member
3f which had to work for their common livelihood.
Even little Mihail used to copy out lectures for
students, and so made a little money. It was the
absolute necessity of earning money to pay for his
fees at the University and to help in supporting the
household that forced Anton to write. That winter
he wrote his first published story, "A Letter to a
Learned Neighbour." All the members of the
family were closely bound together round one com-
mon centre Anton. "What will Anton say?"
was always their uppermost thought on every oc-
casion.

Ivan soon became the master of the parish school
at Voskresensk, a little town in the Moscow province.
Living was cheap there, so the other members of
the family spent the summer there; they were joined
by Anton when he had taken his degree, and the
Chekhovs soon had a large circle of friends in the
neighbourhood. Every day the company met, went
long walks, played croquet, discussed politics, read
aloud, and went into raptures over Shtchedrin.
Here Chekhov gained an insight into military society

6 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

which he afterwards turned to account in his play
"The Three Sisters."

One day a young doctor called Uspensky came
in from Zvenigorod, a small town fourteen miles
away. "Look here," he said to Chekhov, "I am
going away for a holiday and can't find anyone to
take my place. . . . You take the job on. My
Pelageya will cook for you, and there is a guitar
there. . . ."

Voskresensk and Zvenigorod played an important
part m Chekhov's life as a writer; a whole series of
his tales is founded on his experiences there, besides
which it was his first introduction to the society of
literary and artistic people. Three or four miles
from Voskresensk was the estate of a landowner, A.
S. Kiselyov, whose wife was the daughter of Begi-
tchev, the director of the Moscow Imperial Theatre.
The Chekhovs made the acquaintance of the Kise-
lyovs, and spent three summers in succession on their
estate, Babkino.

The Kiselyovs were musical and cultivated peo-
ple, and intimate friends of Dargomyzhsky, Tchay-
kovsky the coinposer, and the Italian actor
Salvini. Madame Kiselyov was passionately fond
of fishing, and would spend hours at a time sitting
on the river bank with Anton, fishing and talking
about literature. She was herself a writer.
Chekhov was always playing with the Kiselyov
children and running about the old park with them.
The people he met, the huntsman, the gardener,
the carpenters, the sick women who came to him
for treatment, and the place itself, river, forests,
nightingales all provided Chekhov with subjects to
write about and put him in the mood for writing.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 7

He always got up early and began writing by seven
o'clock in the morning. After lunch the whole party
set off to look for mushrooms in the woods. Anton
was fond of looking for mushrooms, and said it
stimulated the imagination. At this time he was al-
ways talking nonsense.

Levitan, the painter, lived in the neighbourhood,
and Chekhov and he dressed up, blacked their faces
and put on turbans. Levitan then rode off on a
donkey through the fields, where Anton suddenly
sprang out of the bushes with a gun and began firing
blank cartridges at him.

In 1886 Chekhov suffered for the second time
from an attack of spitting blood. There is no doubt
that consumption was developing, but apparently he
refused to believe this himself. He went on being
as gay as ever, though he slept badly and often
had terrible dreams. It was one of these dreams
that suggested the subject of his story "The Black
Monk."

That year he began to write for the Novoye Vremya,
which made a special feature of his work. Under
the influence of letters from Grigorovitch, who was
the first person to appreciate his talent, Chekhov be-
gan to take his writing more seriously.

In 1887 he visited the south of Russia and stayed
at the Holy Mountains, which gave him the subjects
of two of his stories, "Easter Eve" and "Uprooted."
In the autumn of that year he was asked by Korsh, a
theatrical manager who knew him as a humorous
writer, to write something for his theatre. Chekhov
sat down and wrote "Ivanov" in a fortnight, send-
ing off every act for rehearsal as it was com-
pleted.

8 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

By this time he had won a certain amount of
recognition, everyone was talking of him, and there
was consequently great curiosity about his new play.
The performance was, however, only partially a suc-
cess; the audience, divided into two parties, hissed
vigorously and clapped noisily. For a long time
afterwards the newspapers were full of discussions of
the character and personality of the hero, while the
novelty of the dramatic method attracted great atten-
tion.

In January, 1889, the play was performed at the
Alexandrinsky Theatre in Petersburg and the con-
troversy broke out again.

"Ivanov" was the turning-point in Chekhov's
mental development, and literary career. He took
up his position definitely as a writer, though his brass
plate continued to hang on the door. Shortly after
writing "Ivanov," he wrote a one-act play "called
"The Bear." The following season Solovtsev, who
had taken the chief character in "The Bear," opened
a theatre of his own in Moscow, which was not at first
a success. He appealed to Chekhov to save him with
a play for Christmas, which was only ten days off.
Chekhov set to work and wrote an act every day.
The play was produced in time, but the author was
never satisfied with it, and after a short, very suc-
cessful run took it off the stage. Several years later
he completely remodelled it and produced it as
"Uncle Vanya" at the Art Theatre in Moscow. At
this time he was writing a long novel, of which
he often dreamed aloud, and which he liked to
talk about. He was for several years writing at
this novel, but no doubt finally destroyed it as
no trace of it could be found after his death

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 9

He wanted it to embody his views on life, opin-
ions which he expressed in a letter to Plestcheyev in
these words:

"I am not a Liberal, not a Conservative. ... I
should have liked to have been a free artist and noth-
ing more and I regret that God has not given
me the strength to be one. I hate lying and vio-
lence in all their forms the most absolute free-
dom, freedom from force and fraud in whatever
form the two latter may be expressed, that is
the programme I would hold to if I were a great
artist."

At this time he was always gay and insisted
on having people round him while he worked.
His little house in Moscow, which "looked like a
chest of drawers," was a centre to which people, and
especially young people, flocked in swarms. Up-
stairs they played the piano, a hired one, while down-
stairs he sat writing through it all. "I positively
can't live without visitors," he wrote to Suvorin;
"when I am alone, for some reason I am frightened."
This gay life which seemed so full of promise was,
however, interrupted by violent fits of coughing.
He tried to persuade other people, and perhaps him-
self, that it was not serious, and he would not consent
to be properly examined. He was sometimes so
weak from haemorrhage that he could see no one, but
as soon as the attack was over his mood changed, the
doors were thrown open, visitors arrived, there was
music again, and Chekhov was once more in the wild-
est spirits.

The summers of those two years, 1888 and 1889,
he spent with his family in a summer villa at Luka,
in the province of Harkov. He was in ecstasies be-

12 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

who are to blame, but all of us." In Russia it
was not possible to be a "free artist and nothing
more."'

Chekhov left Sahalin in October and returned to
Europe by way of India and the Suez Canal. He
wanted to visit Japan, but the steamer was not
allowed to put in at the port on account of
cholera.

In the Indian Ocean he used to bathe by diving,
off the forecastle deck when the steamer was going
at full speed, and catching a rope which was let
down from the stern. Once while he was doing this
he saw a shark and a shoal of pilot fish close to
him in the water, as he describes in his story
"Gusev."

The fruits of this journey were a series of articles
m Russkaya Myssl on the island of Sahalin, and two
short stories, "Gusev" and "In Exile." His articles
on Sahalin were looked on with a favourable eye in
Petersburg, and, who knows, it is possible that the
reforms which followed in regard to penal servitude
and exile would not have taken place but for their
influence.

After about a month in Moscow, Chekhov went to-
Petersburg to see Suvorin. The majority of his
Petersburg friends and admirers met him with feel-
ings of envy and ill-will. People gave dinners in his
honour and praised him to the skies, but at the same
time they were ready to "tear him to pieces." Even
in Moscow such people did not give him a moment
for work or rest. He was so prostrated by the feel-
ing of hostihty surrounding him that he accepted
an invitation from Suvorin to go abroad with him.
When Chekhov had completed arrangements for

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 15

equipping the Sahalin schools with the necessary
books, they set off for the South of Europe. Vienna
delighted him, and Venice surpassed all his expec-
tations and threw him into a state of childlike
ecstasy.

Everything fascinated him and then there was-
a change in the weather and a steady downpour of
rain. Chekhov's spirits drooped. Venice was damp
and seemed horrible, and he longed to escape from it.

He had had just such a change of mood in Singa-
pore, which interested him immensely and sud-
denly filled him with such misery that he wanted to
cry.

After Venice Chekhov did not get the pleasure he
expected from any Italian town. Florence did not J

attract him; the sun was not shining. Rome gave
him the impression of a provincial town. He was
feeling exhausted, and to add to his depression he
had got into debt, and had the prospect of spending
the summer without any money at all. ,

Travelling with Suvonn, who did not stint him-
self, drew him into spending more than he intended,
and he owed Suvorin a sum which was further in- >

creased at Monte Carlo by Chekhov's losing nine hun-
dred roubles at roulette. But this loss was a bless- t
ing to him in so far as, for some reason, it made him
feel satisfied with himself. At the end of April, ;
1891, after a stay in Paris, Chekhov returned to Mos- i
cow. Except at Vienna and for the first days in j
Venice and at Nice, it had rained the whole time. , f ,
On his return he had to work extremely hard to pay } I
for his two tours. His brother Mihail was at this '
time inspector of taxes at Alexino, and Chekhov and j u
his household spent the summer not far from that

flUBT LIBRARY

14 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

town in the province of Kaluga, so as to be near him.
They took a house dating from the days of Catherine.
Chekhov's mother had to sit down and rest halfway
when she crossed the hall, the rooms were so large.
He liked the place with its endless avenues of lime-
trees and poetical river, while fishing and gathering
mushrooms soothed him and put him in the mood for
work. Here he went on with his story "The Duel,"
which he had begun before going abroad. From the
windows there was the view of an old house which
Chekhov described in "An Artist's Story," and which
he was very eager to buy. Indeed from this time he
began thinking of buying a country place of his own,
not in Little Russia, but in Central Russia. Peters-
burg seemed to him more 'and more idle, cold and
egoistic, and he had lost all faith in his Petersburg
acquaintances. On the other hand, Moscow no
longer seemed to him as before "like a cook," and he
grew to love it. He grew fond of its climate, its
people and its bells. He always delighted in bells.
Sometimes in earlier days he had gathered together
a party of friends and gone with them to Kamenny
Bridge to listen to the Easter bells. After eagerly
listening to them he would set off to wander from
church to church, and with his legs giving way under
him from fatigue would, only when Easter night
was over, make his way homewards. Meanwhile
his father, who was fond of staying till the end
of the service, would return from the parish church,
and all the brothers would sing "Christ is risen"
in chorus, and then they all sat down to break
their fast. Chekhov never spent an Easter night in
bed.

Meanwhile in the spring of 1892 there began to

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 15

be fears about the crops. These apprehensions were
soon confirmed. An unfortunate summer was fol-
lowed by a hard autumn and winter, in which many
districts were famine-stricken. Side by side with
the Government relief of the starving population
there was a widespread movement for organizing
relief, in which various societies and private persons
took part. Chekhov naturally was drawn into this
movement. The provinces of Nizhni-Novogorod
and Voronezh were in the greatest distress, and in
the former of these two provinces, Yegorov, an old
friend of Chekhov's Voskresensk days, was a district
captain (Zemsky Natchalnik). Chekhov wrote to
Yegorov, got up a subscription fund among his ac-
quaintance, and finally set off himself for Nizhni-
Novogorod. As the starving peasants were selling
their horses and cattle for next to nothing, or even
slaughtering them for food, it was feared that as
spring came on there would be no beasts to plough
with, so that the coming year threatened to be one
of famine also.

Chekhov organized a scheme for buying up the
horses and feeding them till the spring at the expense
of a relief fund, and then, as soon as field labour was
possible, distributing them among the peasants who
were without horses.

After visiting the province of Nizhni-Novogorod,
Chekhov went with Suvorin to Voronezh. But this
expedition was not a successful one. He was re-
volted by the ceremonious dinners with which he was
welcomed as an author, while the whole province was
suffering from famine. Moreover travelling with
Suvorin tied him down and hindered his independent
iction. Chekhov longed for intense personal ac-

16 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

tivity such as he displayed later in his campaign
against the cholera.

In the winter of the same year his long-cherished
dream was realized: he bought himself an estate.
It was in the province of Moscow, near the hamlet
<of Mehhovo. As an estate it had nothing to rec-
ommend it hut an old, badly laid out homestead,
wastes of land, and a forest that had been felled.
It had been bought on the spur of the moment,
simply because it had happened to turn up.
Chekhov had never been to the place before he bought
it, and only visited it when all the formalities had been
completed. One could hardly turn round near the
house for the mass of hurdles and fences. More-
over the Chekhovs moved into it in the winter when
it was under snow, and all boundaries being obliter-
ated, it was impossible to tell what was theirs and
what was not. But in spite of all that, Chekhov's
first impression was favourable, and he never showed
a sign of being disappointed. He was delighted by
the approach of spring and the fresh surprises that
were continually being revealed by the melting snow.
Suddenly it would appear that a whole haystack be-
longed to him which he had supposed to be a neigh-
bour's, then 'an avenue of lime-trees came to light
ivhich they had not distinguished before under
the snow. Everything that was amiss in the
place, everything he did not like, was at once
abolished or altered. But in spite of all the
defects of the house and its surroundings, and
the appalling road from the station (nearly
nine miles) and the lack of rooms, so many
visitors came that there was nowhere to put
them, and beds had sometimes to be made up in the

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 17

passages. Chekhov's household at this time con-
sisted of his father and mother, his sister, and his
younger brother Mihail. These were all permanent
inmates of Melihovo.

As soon as the snow had disappeared the various
duties in the house and on the land were assigned:
Chekhov's sister undertook the flower-beds and the
kitchen garden, his younger brother undertook the
field work. Chekhov himself planted the trees and
looked after them. His father worked from morning
till night weeding the paths in the garden and mak-
ing new ones.

Everything attracted the new landowner: plant-
ing the bulbs and watching the flight of rooks
and starlings, sowing the clover, and the goose
hatching out her goslings. By four o'clock in
the morning Chekhov was up and about. After
drinking his coffee he would go out into the gar-
den and would spend a long time scrutinizing
every fruit-tree and every rose-bush, now cutting
off a branch, now training a shoot, or he would
squat on his heels by a stump and gaze at some-
thing on the ground. It turned out that there
was more land than they needed (639 acres),
and they farmed it themselves, with no bailiff
or steward, assisted only by two labourers, Frol
and Ivan.

At eleven o'clock Chekhov, who got through a
good deal of writing in the morning, would go into
the dining-room and look significantly at the clock.
His mother would jump up from her seat and her
sewing-machine and begin to bustle about, crying:
"Oh dear! Antosha wants his dinner!"

When the table was laid there were so many home-

18 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

made and other dainties prepared by his mother that
there would hardly be space on the table for them.
There was not room to sit at the table either. Be-
sides the five permanent members of the family there
were invariably outsiders as well. After dinner
Chekhov used to go off to his bedroom and lock him-
self in to "read." Between his after-dinner nap
and tea-time he wrote again. The time between tea
and supper (at seven o'clock in the evening) was
devoted to walks and outdoor work. At ten o'clock
they went to bed. Lights were put out and all was
stillness in the house ; the only sound was a subdued
singing and monotonous recitation. This was Pavel
Yegorovitch repeating the evening service in his
room: he was religious and liked to say his prayers
aloud.

From the first day that Chekhov moved to Melihovo
the sick began flocking to him from twenty miles
around. They came on foot or were brought in carts,
and often he was fetched to patients at a distance.
Sometimes from early in the morning peasant women
and children were standing before his door waiting.
He would go out, listen to them and sound them, and
would never let one go away without advice and medi-
cine. His expenditure on drugs was considerable, as
he had to keep a regular store of them. Once some
wayfarers brought Chekhov a man they had picked
up by the roadside in the middle of the night, stabbed
in the stomach with a pitchfork. The peasant
was carried into his study and put down in the
middle of the floor, and Chekhov spent a long
time looking after him, examining his wounds
and bandaging them up. But what was hardest
for Chekhov was visiting the sick at their own

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 19

homes: sometimes there was a journey of several
hours, and in this way the time essential for writing
was wasted.

The first winter at Melihovo was cold; it lasted
late and food was short. Easter came in the snow.
There was a church at Melihovo in which a service
was held only once a year, at Easter. Visitors from
Moscow were staying with Chekhov. The family got
up a choir among themselves and sang all the Easter
matins and mass. Pavel Yegorovitch conducted as
usual. It was out of the ordinary and touching, and
the peasants were delighted: it warmed their hearts
to their new neighbours.

Then the thaw came. The roads hecame appal-
ling. There were only three broken-down horses on
he estate and not a wisp of hay. The horses had to
De fed on rye straw chopped up with an axe
ind sprinkled with flour. One of the horses was
dcious and there was no getting it out of the yard.
Another was stolen in the fields and a dead horse left
n its place. And so for a long time there was only
ne poor spiritless beast to drive which was nick-
amed Anna Petrovna. This Anna Petrovna con-
ived to trot to the station, to take Chekhov to
is patients, to haul logs and to eat nothing but
traw sprinkled with flour. But Chekhov and
is family did not lose heart. Always affectionate,
ay and plucky, he cheered the others, work
ent ahead, and in less than three months every-
dng in the place was changed: the house was
irnished with crockery; there was the ring of
rpenters' axes; six horses were bought, and
1 the field work for the spring had been
mpleted in good time and in accordance with the

20 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

ll~ of agricultural science. They had no experi-
c Tat all, but bought masses of books on the man-
Cement of the land, and every question, however
email was debated in common.

Their first successes delighted Chekhov. He had
thirty acres under rye, thirty under oats and fully
thirty under hay. Marvels were being done m the
kitchen garden: tomatoes and aitichokes did well in
the open air. A dry spring and summer ruined the
oats and the rye; the peasants cut the hay in return
for half the crop, and Chekhov's half seemed a
small stack; only m the kitchen garden things went

The position of Melihovo on the highroad and the
news that Chekhov the author had settled there inevi-
tably led to new acquaintances. Doctors and mem-
bers of the local Zemstvos began visiting Chekhov;
acquaintance was made with the officials of the dis-
trict, and Chekhov was elected a member of the
Serpuhov Sanitary Council.

At that time cholera was raging in the South of
Russia. Every day it came nearer and nearer to the
province of Moscow, and everywheie it found favour-
able conditions among the population weakened by
the famine of autumn and winter. It was essential
to take immediate measures for meeting the
cholera, and the Zemstvo of Serpuhov worked its
hardest. Chekhov as a doctor and a member of
the Sanitary Council was asked to take charge of
a section. He immediately gave his services for
nothing. He had to drive about among the manu-
facturers of the district persuading them to take
adequate measures to combat the cholera. Owing
to his efforts the whole section containing twenty-

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 21

five villages and hamlets was covered with a net-
work of the necessary institutions. For several
months Chekhov scarcely got out of his chaise.
Duimg that time he had to drive all over his sec-
tion, receive patients at home, and do his literary
work. He returned home shattered and exhausted,
but always behaved as though he were doing some-
thing trivial; he cracked little jokes and made
everyone laugh as before, and carried on. conversa-
tions with his dachshund, Quinine, about her sup-
posed sufferings.

By early autumn the place had become unrecog-
nizable. The outhouses had been rebuilt, unneces-
sary fences had been removed, rose-trees had been
planted, a flower-bed had been laid out; in the
fields before the gates Chekhov was planning to dig
a big new pond. With what interest he watched
each day the progress of the work upon it! He
planted trees round it and dropped into it tiny
carp and perch which he brought with him in a jar
from Moscow. The pond became later on more like
an ichthyological station than a pond, as there was
no kind of fish in Russia, except the pike, of which
Chekhov had not representatives in this pond. He
liked sitting on the dam on its bank and watching
with ecstasy shoals of little fish coming suddenly
to the surface and then hiding in its depths. An
excellent well had been dug in Melihovo before this.
Chekhov had been very anxious that it should be
in Little Russian style with a crane. But the posi-
tion did not allow of this, and it was made with a
big wheel painted yellow like the wells at Russian
railway stations. The question where to dig this
well and whether the water in it would be good

22 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

greatly interested Chekhov. He wanted exact in-
formation and a theory based on good grounds, see-
Iiia that nine-tenths of Russia uses water out of wells,
and has done so since time immemorial; but when-
ever he questioned the well-sinkers who came to him,
he received the same vague answer : ' 'Who can tell ?
It's in God's hands. Can you find out beforehand
what the water will be like?"

But the well, like the pond, was a great success,
and the water turned out to be excellent.

He began seriously planning to build a new house
and farm buildings. Creative activity was his pas-
sion. He was never satisfied with what he had
ready-made; he longed to make something new.
He planted little trees, raised pines and fir-trees
from seed, looked after them as though they were
his children, and, like Colonel Vershinin in his
"Three Sisters," dreamed as he looked at them of
what they would be like in three or four hundred
>ears.

The winter of 1893 was a severe one with a great
deal of snow. The snow was so high under the
windows that the hares who ran into the garden stood
on their hind-legs and looked into the window of
Chekhov's study. The swept paths in the garden
were like deep trenches. By then Chekhov had fin-
ished his work in connection with the cholera and
he began to live the life of a hermit. His sister
iound employment in Moscow; only his father and
mother were left with him in the house, and the

Went t

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 23

clock in the morning all the household was up.
tiekhov wrote a great deal that winter. But as soon
. visitors arrived, life was completely transformed,
here was singing, playing on the piano, laughter,
tiekhov's mother did her utmost to load the tables
ith dainties; his father with a mysterious air
ould produce various specially prepared cordials
id liqueurs from some hidden recess; and then it
emed that Melihovo had something of its own,
jculiar to it, which could be found in no other
untry estate. Chekhov was always particularly
eased at the visits of Miss Mizinov and of Pota-
nko. He was particularly fond of them, and his
lole family rejoiced at their arrival. They stayed

> long after midnight on such days, and Chekhov
ote only by snatches. And every time he wrote
e or six lines, he would get up again and go back to

> visitors.

"I have written sixty kopecks' worth," he would
r with a smile.

Braga's "Serenade" was the fashion at that time,

d Chekhov was found of hearing Potapenko play it

the violin while Miss Mizinov sang it.

Having been a student at the Moscow University,

ekhov liked to celebrate St. Tatyana's Day. He

fer missed making a holiday of it when he lived

Moscow. That winter, for the first time, he

meed to be in Petersburg on the 12th of January.

did not forget "St. Tatyana," and assembled all

literary friends on that day in a Petersburg

taurant. They made speeches and kept the holi-

', and this festivity initiated by him was so suc-

sful that the authors went on meeting regularly

awards.

24 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

Though Melihovo was his permanent home,
Chekhov often paid visits to Moscow and Peters-
burg. He frequently stayed at hotels, and there he
sometimes had difficulties over his passport. As a
landowner he had no need of credentials from the
police in the Serpuhov district, and found his Uni-
versity diploma sufficient. In Petersburg and Mos-
cow, under the old passport regulations they would
not give him a passport because he resided
permanently in the provinces. Misunderstandings
arose, sometimes developing into disagreeable in-
cidents and compelling Chekhov to return home
earlier than he had intended. Someone suggested
to Chekhov that he should enter the Government
service and immediately retire from it, as retired of-
ficials used at that time to receive a permanent pass-
port from the department in which they had served.
Chekhov sent a petition to the Department of
Medicine for a post to be assigned to him, and
received an appointment as an extra junior medical
clerk in that Department, and soon afterwards sent
in his resignation, after which he had no more
trouble.

Chekhov spent the whole spring of 1893 at Meli-
hovo, planted roses, looked after his fruit-trees, and
was enthusiastic over country life. That summer
Melihovo was especially crowded with visitors.
Chekhov was visited not only by his friends , but also
by people whose acquaintance he neither sought nor
desired. People were sleeping on sofas and several
in a room; some even spent the night in the passage.
Young ladies, authors, local doctors, members of the
Zemstvo, distant relations with their sons all these
people flitted through Melihovo. Life was a con-

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 25

tinual whirl, everyone was gay; this rush of visitors
and the everlasting readiness of Chekhov's mother
to regale them with food and drink seemed like a
return to the good old times of country life in the
past. Chekhov was the centre on which all attention
was concentrated. Everyone sought him, lived in
trim, and caught up every word he uttered. When
tie was with friends he liked taking walks or making
expeditions to the neighbouring monastery. The
Chaise, the cart, and the racing droshky were brought
Dut Chekhov put on his white tunic, buckled a
strap round his waist, and got on the racing droshky.
\ young lady would sit sideways behind him, hold-
ng on to the strap. The white tunic and strap used
o make Chekhov call himself an Hussar. The party
Yould set off; the "Hussar" in the racing droshky
/vould lead the way, and then came the cart and the
chaise full of visitors.

The numbers of guests necessitated more build-
ng, as the house would not contain them all. In-
stead of a farm, new buildings close to the house
tself were begun. Some of the farm buildings were
)ulled down, others were put up after Chekhov's own
)lans. A new cattle yard made its appearance, and
>y it a hut with a well and a hurdle fence in the
.Jttle Russian style, a bathhouse, a barn, and finally
Chekhov's dream a lodge. It was a little house
vith three tiny rooms, in one of which a bedstead
vas put with difficulty, and in another a writing-table.
Vt first this lodge was intended only for visitors, but
fterwards Chekhov moved into it and there he wrote
iis "Seagull." This little lodge was built among
he fruit-bushes, and to rea,ch it one had to pass
hrough the orchard. In spring, when the apples

26 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

and cherries were in blossom, it was pleasant to live
in this lodge, but in winter it was so buried in the
snow that pathways had to be cut to it through drifts
as high as a man.

Chekhov suffered terribly about this time from
his cough. It troubled him particularly in the
morning. But he made light of it. He was afraid
of worrying his family. His younger brother once
saw his handkerchief spattered with blood, and
asked what it meant. Chekhov seemed disconcerted
and said:

"Oh, nothing; it is no matter. . . . Don't tell
Masha and Mother."

The cough was the reason for Chekhov's going in
1894 to the Crimea. He stayed in Yalta, though he
evidently did not like it and longed to be home.

Chekhov's activity in the campaign against the
cholera resulted in his being elected a member of
the Zemstvo. He was keenly interested in every-
thing to do with the new roads to be constructed,
and the new hospitals and schools it was intended
to open. Besides this public work the neighbour-
hood was indebted to him for the making of a high-
road from the station of Lopasnya to Melihovo, and
for the building of schools at Talezh, Novoselka, and
Melihovo. He made the plans for these schools
'himself, bought the material, and superintended the
building of them. When he talked about them his
eyes kindled, and it was evident that if he had had
the means he would have built, not three, but a
multitude.

At the opening of the school at Novoselka, the
peasants brought him the ikon and offered him bread
.and salt. Chekhov was much embarrassed in re-

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 27

)onding to their gratitude, but his face and his

lining eyes showed that he was pleased. Besides

te schools he built a fire-station for the village and

belfry for the church, and ordered a cross made

looking-glass for the cupola, the flash of which in

ie sun or moonlight was visible more than eight

iles away.

Chekhov spent the year 1894 at Melihovo, began

riting "The Seagull," and did a great deal of work.

e paid a visit to Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyana, and

turned enchanted with the old man and his family.

lekhov was already changing; he looked haggard,

der, sallower. He coughed, he was tortured by

testmal trouble. Evidently he was now aware of

e gravity of his illness, but, as before, made no com-

aint and tried to hide it from others.

In 1896 "The Seagull" was performed at the

iexandrinsky Theatre in Petersburg. It was a

LSCO. The actors did not know their parts; in the

eatre there was "a strained condition of boredom

d bewilderment." The notices in the press were

ejudiced and stupid. Not wishing to see or meet

lyone, Chekhov kept out of sight after the per-

rmance, and by next morning was in the train on

s way back to Melihovo. The subsequent per-

rmances of "The Seagull," when the actors under-

)od it, were successful.

Chekhov had collected a large number of books,
d in 1896 he resolved to present them to the pub-
library in his native town of Taganrog. Whole
les of books were sent by Chekhov from Peters-
rg and Moscow, and lordanov, the mayor of
ganrog, sent him lists of the books needed. At
3 same time, at Chekhov's suggestion, something

28 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

i

like an Information Bureau was instituted in con- s
nection with the Taganrog Library. There were to
be catalogues of all the important commercial firms,
all the existing regulations and government enact-
ments on all current questions, everything, in fact,
which might he of immediate service to a reader in
any practical difficulty. The library at Taganrog
has now developed into a fine educational institu-
tion, and is lodged in a special building designed
and equipped for it and dedicated to the memory of
Chekhov.

Chekhov took an active interest in the census of
the people in 1896. It will be remembered that he
had made a census of the whole convict population
of the island of Sahalin on his own initiative and
at his own expense in 1890. Now he was taking
part in a census again. He studied peasant life in all
its aspects; he was on intimate terms with his peasant
neighbours, to whom he was now indispensable as a
doctor and a friend always ready to give them good
counsel.

Just before the census was completed Chekhov
was taken ill with influenza, but that did not pre-
vent his carrying out his duties. In spite of head-
ache, he went from hut to hut and village to village,
and then had to work at putting together his ma-
terials. He was absolutely alone in his work. The
Zemsky Natchalniks, upon whom the government re-
lied principally to carry out the census, were inert,
and for the most part the work was left to private
initiative.

In February, 1897, Chekhov was completely
engrossed by a project of building a "People's
Palace" in Moscow. "People's Palaces" had not

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 29

m thought of; the common people spent their
me in drink-shops. The "People's Palace" in
scow was designed on broad principles; there
! to be a library, a reading-room, lecture-rooms.,
nuseum, a theatre. It was proposed to run it
a company of shareholders with a capital of half
lillion roubles. Owing to various causes in no
T connected with Chekhov, this scheme came ta
hlng.

n March he paid a visit to Moscow, where Suvorin

expecting him. He had hardly sat down to din-

at The Hermitage when he had a sudden hsemor-

?e from the lungs. He was taken to a private

pital, where he remained till the 10th of April.

en his sister, who knew nothing of his illness,

ved in Moscow, she was met by her bi other Ivan,

gave her a card of admission to visit the invalid

die hospital. On the card were the woids:

sase don't tell father or mother." His sister

t to the hospital. There casting a casual glance

little table, she saw on it a diagram of the lungs,

hich the upper part of the left lung was marked

a red pencil. She guessed at once that this

what was affected in Chekhov's case. This

the sight of her brother alarmed her. Chekhov,

had always been so gay, so full of spirits and

ity, looked terribly ill; he was forbidden to

3 or to talk, and had hardly the strength to do-

e was declared to be suffering from tuberculosis
le luns;s, and it was essential to try and ward
F at all costs, and to escape the unwholesome 1
lern spring. He recognized himself that this,
essential.

30 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

When he left the hospital he returned to Mehhovo
and prepared to go abroad. He went first to Biar-
ritz, but there he was met by bad weather. A fash-
ionable, extravagant way of living did not suit his
tastes, and although he was delighted with the sea and
the life led (especially by the children) on the beach,
he soon moved on to Nice. Here he stayed for a
considerable time at the Pension Russe in the Rue
Gounod. He seemed to be fully satisfied with the
life there. He liked the warmth and the people he
met, M. Kovalevsky, V. M. Sobolesky, V. T. Nemiro-
vitch-Dantchenko, the artist V. T. Yakobi and I. N.
Potapenko. Prince A. I. Sumbatov arrived at Nice
too, and Chekhov used sometimes to go with him to
Monte Carlo to roulette.

Chekhov followed all that he had left behind in
Russia with keen attention: he was anxious about
the Chronicle of Surgery, which he had more than
once saved from ruin, made arrangements about Mel-
ihovo, and so on.

He spent the autumn and winter in Nice, and in
February, 1898, meant to go to Africa. He wanted
to visit Algiers and Tunis, but Kovalevsky, with
whom he meant to travel, fell ill, and he had to give
up the project. He contemplated a visit to Corsica,
but did not carry out that plan either, as he was taken
seriously ill himself. A wretched dentist used con-
taminated forceps in extracting a tooth, and Chekhov
was attacked by periostitis in a malignant form. In
his own words, "he was in such pain that he climbed
up the wall."

As soon as the spring had come he felt an irresisti-
ble yearning for Russia. He was weary of enforced
idleness; he missed the snow and the Russian coun-

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 31

try, and at the same time he was depressed at having
gained no weight in spite of the climate, good nourish-
ment, and idleness.

While he was at Nice France was in the throes
of the Dreyfus affair. Chekhov began studying the
Dreyfus and Zola cases from shorthand notes, and
becoming convinced of the innocence of both, wrote
a heated letter to Suvorm, which led to a coolness be-
tween them.

He spent March, 1898, in Paris. He sent three
hundred and nineteen volumes of French literature
from Paris to the public library at Taganrog.

The lateness of the spring in Russia forced
Chekhov to remain in Pans till May, when he re-
turned to Mehhovo. Melihovo became gay and
lively on his arrival. Visitors began coming again;
he was as hospitable as ever, but he was quieter, no
longer jested as in the past, and perhaps owing to his
illness talked little. But he still took as much pleas-
ure in his roses.

After a comparatively good summer there came
days of continual rain, and on the 14th of Septem-
ber Chekhov went away to Yalta. He had to choose
between Nice and Yalta. He did not want to go
abroad, and preferred the Crimea, reckoning that he
might possibly seize an opportunity to pay a brief
visit to Moscow, where his plays were to appear at
the Art Theatre. His choice did not disappoint him.
That autumn in Yalta was splendid; he felt well
there, and the progress of his disease led him to set-
tle in Yalta permanently.

Chekhov obtained a piece of land at Autka, and
the same autumn began building. He spent whole
days superintending the building. Stone and plaster

32 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

was brought, Turks and Tatars dug the ground and
laid the foundation, while he planted little trees and
watched with fatherly anxiety every new shoot on
them. Every stone, every tree there is eloquent of
Chekhov's creative energy. That same autumn he
bought the little property of Kutchuka. It was
twenty-four miles from Yalta, and attracted him by
its wildness and primitive beauty. To reach it one
had to drive along the road at a giddy height. He
began once more dreaming and drawing plans. The
possible future began to take a different shape to
him now, and he was already dreaming of moving
fiom Melihovo, farming and gardening and living
there as in the country. He wanted to have hens,
cows, a horse and donkeys, and, of course, all of this
would have been quite possible and might have been
realized if he had not been slowly dying. His dreams
remained dreams, and Kutchuka stands uninhabited
to this day.

The winter of 1898 was extremely severe in the
Crimea. The cold, the snow, the stormy sea, and
the complete lack of people akin to him in spirit
and of "interesting women" wearied Chekhov; he
began to be depressed. He was irresistibly drawn
to the north, and began to fancy that if he moved
for the winter to Moscow, where his plays were be-
ing acted with such success and where everything was
so full of interest for him, it would be no worse for
his health than staying in Yalta, and he began dream-
ing of buying a house in Moscow. He wanted at
one moment to get something small and snug in the
neighbourhood of Kursk Station, where it might be
possible to stay the three winter months in every
comfort; but when such a house was found his

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 33

mood changed and he resigned himself to life at
Yalta.

The January and February of 1899 were particu-
larly irksome to Chekhov: he suffered from an in-
testinal trouble which poisoned his existence. More-
over consumptive patients from all over Russia be-
gan appealing to him to assist them to come to Yalta.
These invalids were almost always poor, and on
reaching Yalta mostly ended their lives in miserable
conditions, pining for their native place. Chekhov
exerted himself on behalf of everyone, printed ap-
peals in the papers, collected money, and did his ut-
most to alleviate their condition.

After the unfavourable winter came an exquisite
warm spring, and on the 12th of April Chekhov was
in Moscow and by May in Mehhovo. His father
had died the previous October, and with his death
a great link with the place was broken. The con-
sciousness of having to go away early in the autumn
gradually brought Chekhov to decide to sell the
place.

On the 25th of August he went back to his own
villa at Yalta, and soon afterwards Mehhovo was sold,
and his mother and sister joined him. During the
last four and a half years of his life Chekhov's health
grew rapidly worse. His chief interest was centred
in Moscow, in the Art Theatre, which had just been
started, and the greater part of his dramatic work wa's
done during this period.

Chekhov was ill all the winter of 1900, and only
felt better towards the spring. During those long
winter months he wrote "In the Ravine." The de-
testable spring of that year affected his mood and
Ms health even more. Snow fell on the 5th of

34 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

March, and this had a shattering effect on him. In
April he was again very ill. An attack of intestinal
trouble prevented him from eating, drinking, or
working. As soon as it was over Chekhov, home-
sick for the north, set off for Moscow, but there he
was met by severe weather. Returning in August
to Yalta, he wrote "The Three Sisters."

He spent the autumn in Moscow, and at the be-
ginning of December went to the French Riviera, set-
tled in Nice, and dreamed again of a visit to Africa,
but went instead to Rome. Here, as usual, he met
with severe weather. Early in February he re-
turned to Yalta. That year there was a soft, sunny
spring. Chekhov spent whole days in the open air,
engaged in his favourite occupations ; he planted and
pruned trees, looked after his garden, ordered all
sorts of seeds, and watched them coming up. At
the same time he was working on behalf of the in-
valids coming to Yalta, who appealed to him for help,
and also completing the library he had founded at
Taganrog, and planning to open a picture gallery
there.

In May, 1901, Chekhov went to Moscow and was
thoroughly examined by a physician, who urged him
to go at once to Switzerland or to take a koumiss cure.
Chekhov preferred the latter.

On the 25th of May he married Olga Knipper, one
of the leading actresses at the Art Theatre, and with
her went off to the province of Ufa for the koumiss
cure. On the way they had to wait twenty-four hours
for a steamer, in very unpleasant surroundings, at a
place called Pyany Bor ("Drunken Market"), in the
province of Vyatka.

In the autumn of 1901 Tolstoy was staying, for

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 35

the sake of his health, at Gaspra. Chekhov was
very fond of him and frequently visited him. Alto-
gether that autumn was an eventful one for him:
Kuprin, Bunin and Gorky visited the Crimea; the
writer Elpatyevsky settled there also, and Chekhov
felt fairly well. Tolstoy's illness was the centre of
general attention, and Chekhov was very uneasy about
him.

In 1902 there was suddenly a change for the
worse: violent haemorrhage exhausted him till the be-
ginning of February; he was for over a month con-
fined to his study. It was at this time that the
incident of Gorky's election to the Academy and sub-
sequent expulsion from it led Chekhov to write a
letter to the Royal President of the Academy asking
that his own name should be struck off the list of
Academicians.

Chekhov had hardly recovered when his wife was
taken seriously ill. When she was a little better
he made a tour by the Volga and the Kama as far
as Perm. On his return he settled with his wife
in a summer villa not far from Moscow; he spent
July there and returned home to Yalta in August.
But the longing for a life of movement and culture,
the desire to be nearer to the theatre, drew him to
the north again, and in September he was back in
Moscow. Here he was not left in peace for one
minute; swarms of visitors jostled each other from
morning till night. Such a life exhausted him; he
ran away from it to Yalta in December, but did not
escape it there. His cough was worse; every day
he had a high temperature, and these symptoms were
followed by an attack of pleurisy. He did not get
up all through the Christmas holidays; he still had

36 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

it was in this enforced

te possAle that if Chekhov had taken care
of himsdf his disease would not have developed so
rapidly or proved fatal. The feverish energy of his
temperament, his readiness to respond to every mi-
pression, and his thirst for activity, drove him from
south to north and back again, regardless of his
health and of the climate. Like all invalids, he
ought to have gone on living in the same place, at
Nice or at Yalta, until he was better, but he lived
exactly as though he had been in good health. When
he arrived in the north he was always excited and
absorbed by what was going on, and this exhilara-
tion he mistook for an improvement in his health;
but he had only to return to Yalta for the reaction
to set in, and it would seem to him at once that his
case was hopeless, that the Crimea had no beneficial
effect on consumptives, and that the climate was
wretched.

The spring of 1903 passed fairly favourably. He
recovered sufficiently to go to Moscow and even to
Petersburg. On returning from Petersburg he be-
gan preparing to go to Switzerland. But his state of
health was such that his doctor in Moscow advised
him to give up the idea of Switzerland and even of
Yalta, and to stay somewhere not very far from Mos-
cow. He followed this advice and settled at Nar.
Now that it was proposed that he should stay the
winter in the north, all that he had created in Yalta
his house and his garden seemed unnecessary
and objectless. In the end he returned to Yalta and
set to work on "The Cherry Orchard."

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 37

In October, 1903, the play was finished and he
set off to produce it himself in Moscow. He spent
days at a time in the Art Theatre, producing his
"Cherry Orchard," and incidentally supervising the
setting and performance of the plays of other
authors. He gave advice and criticized, was excited
and enthusiastic.

On the 17th of January, 1904, "The Cherry
Orchard" was produced for the first time. The first
performance was the occasion of the celebration of
the twenty-fifth anniversary of Chekhov's literary ac-
tivity. A great number of addresses were read and
speeches were made. Chekhov was many times
called before the curtain, and this expression of uni-
versal sympathy exhausted him to such a degree that
the very day after the performance he began to think
with relief of going back to Yalta, where he spent the
following spring.

His health was completely shattered, and every-
one who saw him secretly thought the end was not
far off; but the nearer Chekhov was to the end. the
less he seemed to realize it. Ill as he was, at the
beginning of May he set off for Moscow. He was
terribly ill all the way on the journey, and on ar-
rival took to his bed at once. He was laid up till
June.

On the 3rd of June he set off with his wife for a
cure abroad to the Black Forest, and settled in a
little spa called Badenweiler. He was dying, al-
though he wrote to everyone that he had almost re-
covered, and that health was coming back to him
not by ounces but by hundredweights. He was
dying, but he spent the time dreaming of going to
the Italian lakes and returning to Yalta by sea

38 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

from Trieste, and was already making inquiries
about the steamers and the times they stopped at
Odessa.

He died on the 2nd of July.

His body was taken to Moscow and buried in
the Novodyevitchy Monastery, beside his father's
tomb.

LETTERS

To HIS BROTHER MIHAIL.

TAGANROG,

July 1, 1876.

DEAR BROTHER MISHA,

I got your letter when I was fearfully bored
and was sitting at the gate yawning, and so you
can judge how welcome that immense letter was.
Your writing is good, and in the whole letter I have
not found one mistake in spelling. But one thing
I don't like: why do you style yourself "your worth-
less and insignificant brother"? You recognize
your insignificance? . . . Recognize it before
God; perhaps, too, in the presence of beauty, intel-
ligence, nature, but not before men. Among men
you must be conscious of your dignity. Why, you
are not a rascal, you are an honest man, aren't you?
Well, respect yourself as an honest man and know
that an honest man is not something worthless.
Don't confound "being humble" with "recognizing
one's worthlessness." . . .

It is a good thing that you read. Acquire the
habit of doing so. In time you will come to value
that habit. Madame Beecher-Stowe has wrung tears
from your eyes? I read her once, and six months
ago read her again with the object of studying her
and after reading I had an unpleasant sensation
which mortals feel after eating too many raisins or

39

40 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

currants. . . . Read "Don Quixote." It is a fine
thing. It is by Cervantes, who is said to be almost
on a & level with Shakespeare. I advise my brothers
to read if they haven't already done so Turgenev's
t4 Hamlet and Don Quixote." You won't under-
stand it, my dear. If you want to read a book of
travel that won't bore you, read Gontcharov's "The
Frigate Pallada."

... I am going to bring with me a boarder who
will pay twenty roubles a month and live under our
general supervision. Though even twenty roubles
is not enough if one considers the price of food in
Moscow and mother's weakness for feeding boarders
with righteous zeal.*

To HIS COUSIN, MIHAIL CHEKHOV.

TAGANROG,

May 10, 1877.

... If I send letters to my mother, care of you,
please give them to her when you are alone with
her; there are things in life which one can confide
in one person only, whom one trusts. It is because
of this that I write to my mother without the knowl-
edge of the others, for whom my secrets are quite
uninteresting, or, rather, . unnecessary. ... My
second revest is of more importance Please go
on comforting my mother, who is both physically
and morally broken. She has found in you not
merely a nephew but a great deal more and better
than a nephew. My mother's character is such that
the moral support of others is a great help to her. .

S th! e T f ^ "f? b Chekh V When he was in th
the Taganrog high school.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 41

t is a silly request, isn't it? But you will under-
hand, especially as I have said "moral," i.e.., spiritual
upport. There is no one in this wicked world
learei to us than our mother, and so you will greatly
iblige your humble servant by comforting his worn-
ut and weary mother. . . .

To HIS UNCLE, M. G. CHEKHOV.

Moscow,
1885.

... I could not come to see you last summer
ecause I took the place of a district doctor friend
f mine who went away for his holiday, but this year
hope to travel and therefore to see you. Last De-
ember I had an attack of spitting blood, and decided
) take some money from the Literary Fund and go
broad for my health. I am a little better now, but
still think that I shall have to go away. And when-
ver I go abroad, or to the Crimea, or to the Cauca-
is, I will go through Taganrog.

... I am sorry I cannot join you in being of
jrvice to my native Taganrog. ... I am sure
lat if my work had been there I should have been
ilmer, more cheerful, in better health, but evidently

is my fate to remain in Moscow. My home and
iy career are here. I have work of two sorts. As
doctor I should have grown slack in Taganrog and
rgotten my medicine, but in Moscow a doctor has
) time to go to the club and play cards. As a writer
am no use except in Moscow or Petersburg.

My medical work is progressing little by little,
go on steadily treating patients. Every day I have

spend more than a rouble on cabs. I have a lot

42 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

of friends and therefore many patients. Half of
them I have to treat for nothing, but the other half
pay me three or five roubles a visit. ... I need
hardly say I have not made a fortune yet, and it will
he a long time before I do, but I live tolerably and
need nothing. So long as I am ahve and well the
position of the family is secure. I have bought new
furniture, hired a good piano, keep two servants,
give little evening parties with music and singing.
I have no debts and do not want to borrow. Till
quite recently we used to run an account at the butch-
er's and grocer's, but now I have stopped even that,
and we pay cash for everything. What will come
later, there is no knowing; as it is we have nothing to
complain of, ...

To N. A. LEIKIN.

Moscow,
October, 1885

. . . You advise me to go to Petersburg, and say
that Petersburg is not China. I know it is not,
and as you are aware, I have long realized the neces-
sity of going there; but what am I to do? Owing
to the fact that we are a large family, I never have
a ten-rouble note to spare, and to go there, even
if I did it in the most uncomfortable and beggarly
way, would cost at least fifty roubles. How am I
to get the money? I can't squeeze it out of my
family and don't think I ought to. If I were to
cut down our two courses at dinner to one, I should
begin to pine away from pangs of conscience. . . .
Allah only knows how difficult it is for me to keep
my balance, and how easy it would be for me to

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 43

slip and lose my equilibrium. I fancy that if next
month I should earn twenty or thirty roubles less,
my balance would be gone, and I should be in diffi-
culties. I am awfully apprehensive about money
matters and, owing to this quite uncommercial
cowardice in pecuniary affairs, I avoid loans and
payments on account. I am not difficult to move.
If I had money I should fly from one city to another
endlessly.

To A. S. SUVORIN.

Moscow,
February 21, 1886.

. . . Thank you for the flattering things you say
about my work and for having published my story
so soon. You can judge yourself how refreshing,
even inspiring, the kind attention of an experienced
and gifted writer like yourself has been to me.

I agree with what you say about the end of my
story which you have cut out; thank you for the help-
ful advice. I have been writing for the last six years,
but you are the first person who has taken the trouble
to advise and explain.

. . . I do not write very much not more than
two or three short stories weekly.

To D. V. GRIGOROVITCH.

Moscow,
March 28, 1886.

Your letter, my kind, fervently beloved bringer
of good tidings, struck me like a flash of lightning.
I almost burst into tears, I was overwhelmed, and
now I feel it has left a deep trace in my soul ! May

44 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

God show the same tender kindness to you in your
age as you have shown me in my youth! I can
find neither words nor deeds to thank you. You
know with what eyes ordinary people look at the
elect such as you, and so you can judge what your
letter means for my self-esteem. It is better than
any diploma, and for a writer who is just beginning
it is payment both for the present and the future. I
am almost dazed. I have no power to judge whether
I deserve this high reward. I only repeat that it has
overwhelmed me.

If I have a gift which one ought to respect, I
confess before the pure candour of your heart that
hitherto I have not respected it. I felt that I had
a gift, but I had got into the habit of thinking that
it was insignificant. Purely external causes are
sufficient to make one unjust to oneself, suspicious,
and morbidly sensitive. And as I realize now I
have always had plenty of such causes. All my
friends and relatives have always taken a condescend-
ing tone to my writing, and never ceased urging
me in a friendly way not to give up real work for
the sake of scribbling. I have hundreds of friends
in Moscow, and among them a dozen or two writ-
ers, but I cannot recall a single one who reads me
or considers me an artist. In Moscow there is a
so-called Literary Circle: talented people and medioc-
rities of all ages and colours gather once a week in
a private room of a restaurant and exercise their
tongues. If I went there and read them a single
passage of your letter, they would laugh in my face.
In the course of the five years that I have been
knocking about from one newspaper office to another
I have had time to assimilate the general view of

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 45

my literary insignificance. I soon got used to
looking down upon my work, and so it has gone
from bad to worse. That is the first reason. The
second is that I am a doctor, and am up Lo my ears
in medical work, so that the proverb about trying to
catch two hares has given to no one more sleepless
nights than me.

I am writing all this to you in order to excuse
this grievous sin a little before you. Hitherto my
attitude to my literary work has been frivolous, heed-
less, casual. I don't remember a single story over
which I have spent more than twenty-four hours,
and "The Huntsman," which you liked, I wrote in
the bathing-shed! I wrote my stories as reporters
write their notes about fires, mechanically, half-un-
consciously, taking no thought of the reader or my-
self. ... I wrote and did all I could not to waste
upon the story the scenes and images dear to me
which God knows why I have treasured and kept
carefully hidden.

The first impulse to self-criticism was given me
by a very kind and, to the best of my belief, sincere
letter from Suvorin. I began to think of writing
something decent, but I still had no faith in my
being any good as a writer. And then, unexpected
and undreamed of, came your letter. Forgive the
comparison: it had on me the effect of a Governor's
order to clear out of the town within twenty-four
hours i.e., I suddenly felt an imperative need to
hurry, to make haste and get out of where I have
stuck. . . .

I agree with you in everything. When I saw
"The Witch" in print I felt myself the cynicism of
the points to which you call my attention. They

46 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

would not have been there had I written this story
in three or four days instead of in one.

I shall put an end to working against time, but
cannot do so just yet. ... It is impossible to get
out of the rut I have got into. I have nothing
against going hungry, as I have done in the past,
but it is not a question of myself. ... I give to
literature my spare time, two or three hours a day
and a bit of the night, that is, time which is of no
use except for short things. In the summer, when
I have more time and have fewer expenses, I will
start on some serious work.

I cannot put my real name on the book because
it is too late: the design for the cover is ready and
the book printed.* Many of my Petersburg friends
advised me, even before you did, not to spoil the
book by a pseudonym, but I did not listen to them,
probably out of vanity. I dislike my book very
much. It's a hotch-potch, a disorderly medley of the
poor stuff I wrote as a student, plucked by the censor
and by the editors of comic papers. I am sure that
many people will be disappointed when they read
it. Had I known that I had readers and that you
were watching me, I would not have published this
book.

I rest all my hopes on the future. I am only
twenty-six. Perhaps I shall succeed in doing some-
thing, though time flies fast.

Forgive my long letter and do not blame a man
because, for the first time in his life, he has made
bold to treat himself to the pleasure of writing to
Grigorovitch.

Send me your photograph, if possible. I am so
* "Motley Tales" is meant.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 47

overwhelmed with your kindness that I feel as though
I should like to write a whole ream to you. God
grant you health and happiness, and believe in the
sincerity of your deeply respectful and grateful

A. CHEKHOV.

To N. A. LEIKIN.

Moscow,
April 6, 1886.

... I am ill. Spitting of blood and weakness.
I am not writing anything. ... If I don't sit down
to write to-morrow, you must forgive me I shall
not send you a story for the Easter number. I ought
to go to the South but I have no money. ... I am
afraid to submit myself to be sounded by my col-
leagues. I am inclined to think it is not so much
my lungs as my throat that is at fault. ... I have
no fever.

To MADAME M. V. KISELYOV.

BABKINO,
June, 1886.

LOVE UNRIPPLED*

(A NOVEL)
Part I.

It was noon. . . . The setting sun with its
crimson, fiery rays gilded the tops of pines, oaks,
and fir-trees. ... It was still; only in the air the
birds were singing, and in the distance a hungry

* Parody of a feminine novel.

48 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

wolf howled mournfully. . . . The driver turned
round and said:

"More snow has fallen, sir."

"What?"

"I say, more snow has fallen."

"Ah!"

Vladimir Sergeitch Tabatchin, who is the hero of
our story, looked for the last time at the sun and

expired.

* * * & *

A week passed. . . . Birds and corncrakes
hovered, whistling, over a newly-made grave. The
sun was shining. A young widow, bathed in tears,
was standing by, and in her grief sopping her whole
handkerchief. . . .

Moscow,
September 21, 1886.

... It is not much fun to be a great writer. To
begin with, it's a dreary life. Work from morning
till night and not much to show for it. Money is as
scarce as cats' tears. I don't know how it is with
Zola and Shtchedrin, but in my flat it is cold and
smoky. . . . They give me cigarettes, as before,
on holidays only. Impossible cigarettes! Hard,
damp, sausage-like. Before I begin to smoke I light
the lamp, dry the cigarette over it, and only then I
tegin on it; the lamp smokes, the cigarette splutters
and turns brown, I burn my fingers ... it is enough
to make one shoot oneself!

. . ". I am more or less ill, and am gradually turn-
ing into a dried dragon-fly.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 49

... I go about as festive as though it were my
rirthday, but to judge from the critical glances of
he lady cashier at the Budilnik, I am not dressed
n the height of fashion, and my clothes are not
)rand-new. I go in buses, not in cabs.

But being a writer has its good points. In the
irst place, my book, I hear, is going rather well;
econdly, in October I shall have money; thirdly, I
Lin beginning to reap laurels: at the refreshment bars
)eople point at me with their fingers, they pay me
ittle attentions and treat me to sandwiches. Korsh
aught me in his theatre and straight away presented
tie with a free pass. . . . My medical colleagues
igh when they meet me, begin to talk of literature
nd assure me that they are sick of medicine. And
o on. ...

September 29.

. . . Life is grey, there are no happy people to
ie seen. . . . Life is a nasty business for everyone,
^hen I am serious I begin to think that people who
tave an aversion for death are illogical. So far as

understand the order of things, life consists of
lothmg but horrors, squabbles, and trivialities mixed
ogether or alternating!

December 3.

This morning an individual sent by Prince Urusov
urned up and asked me for a short story for a sport-
ag magazine edited by the said Prince. I refused,
f course, as I now refuse all who come with sup-
ilications to the foot of my pedestal. In Russia
here are now two unattainable heights : Mount El-
orus and myself.

50 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

The Prince's envoy was deeply disappointed by
my refusal, nearly died of grief, and finally begged
me to recommend him some writers who are
versed in sport. I thought a little, and very oppor-
tunely remembered a lady writer who dreams of
glory and has for the last year been ill with envy of
my literary fame. In short, I gave him your ad-
dress. . . . You might write a story "The
Wounded Doe" you remember, how the huntsmen
wound a doe; she looks at them with human eyes,
and no one can bring himself to kill her. It's not a
bad subject, but dangerous because it is difficult to
avoid sentimentality you must write it like a re-
port, without pathetic phrases, and begin like this:
"On such and such a date the huntsmen in the
Daraganov forest wounded a young doe. . . ."
And if you drop a tear you will strip the subject
of its severity and of everything worth attention in
it.

December 13.

. . . With your permission I steal out of your
last two letters to my sister two descriptions of na-
ture for my stories. It is curious that you have quite
a masculine way of writing. In every line (except
when dealing with children) you are a man ! This,
of course, ought to flatter your vanity, for speaking
generally, men are a thousand times better than
women, and superior to them.

In Petersburg I was resting i.e., for days together
I was rushing about town paying calls and listening
to compliments which my soul abhors. Alas and
alack! In Petersburg I am becoming fashionable
like Nana. While Korolenko, who is serious, is

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 51

hardly known to the editors, my twaddle is being
read by all Petersburg. Even th6 senator G. reads
me. ... It is gratifying, but my literary feeling is
wounded. I feel ashamed of the public which runs
after lap-dogs simply because it fails to notice
elephants, and I am deeply convinced that
not a soul will know me when I begin to work in
earnest.

To HIS BROTHER NIKOLAY.

Moscow,
1886.

. . . You have often complained to me that
people "don't understand you"! Goethe and New-
ton did not complain of that. . . . Only Christ
complained of it, but He was speaking of His doc-
trine and not of Himself. . . . People understand
you perfectly well. And if you do not understand
yourself, it is not their fault.

I assure you as a brother and as a friend I under-
stand you and feel for you with all my heart. I
know your good qualities as I know my five fingers;
I value and deeply respect them. If you like, to
prove that I understand you, I can enumerate those
qualities. I think you are kind to the point of soft-
ness, magnanimous, unselfish, ready to share your
last farthing; you have no envy nor hatred; you are
simple-hearted, you pity men and beasts; you are
trustful, without spite or guile, and do not remember
evil. . . . You have a gift from above such as other
people have not: you have talent. This talent
places you above millions of men, for on earth only
one out of two millions is an artist. Your talent sets

52 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

you apart: if you were a toad or a tarantula, even
then, people would respect you, for to talent all things
are forgiven.

You have only one failing, and the falseness of
your position, and your unhappmess and your
catarrh of the bowels are all due to it. That is your
utter lack of culture. Forgive me, please, but
veritas magis amicitice. . . . You see, life has its
conditions. In order to feel comfortable among
educated people, to be at home and happy with them,
one must be cultured to a certain extent. Talent
has brought you into such a circle, you belong to it,
but . . . you are drawn away from it, and you
vacillate between cultured people and the lodgers
vis-a-vis.

Cultured people must, in my opinion, satisfy the
following conditions:

1. They respect human personality, and therefore
they are always kind, gentle, polite, and ready to give
in to others. They do not make a row because of a
hammer or a lost piece of india-rubber; if they live
with anyone they do not regard it as a favour and, go-
ing away, they do not say "nobody can live with you."
They forgive noise and cold and dried-up meat and
witticisms and the presence of strangers in their
homes.

2. They have sympathy not for beggars and cats
alone. Their heart aches for what the eye does not
see. . . . They sit up at night in order to help
P. . . ., to pay for brothers at the University, and
to buy clothes for their mother.

3. They respect the property of others, and there-
for pay their debts.

4. They are sincere, and dread lying like fire.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 53

They don't lie even in small things. A lie is insult-
ing to the listener and puts him in a lower position
in the eyes of the speaker. They do not pose,
they behave in the street as they do at home, they
do not show off before their humbler comrades.
They are not given to babbling and forcing their
uninvited confidences on others: Out of respect
for other people's ears they more often keep silent
than talk.

5. They do not disparage themselves to rouse com-
passion. They do not play on the strings of other
people's hearts so that they may sigh and make much
of them. They do not say "I am misunderstood,"
or "I have become second-rate," because all this is
striving after cheap effect, is vulgar, stale,
false. . . .

6. They have no shallow vanity. They do not
care for such false diamonds as knowing celebrities,
shaking hands with the drunken P.,* listening
to the raptures of a stray spectator in a picture show,
being renowned in the taverns. ... If they do a
pennyworth they do not strut about as though they
had done a hundred roubles' worth, and do not brag
of having the entry where others are not ad-
mitted. . . . The truly talented always keep in
obscurity among the crowd, as far as possible from
advertisement. . . . Even Krylov has said that
an empty barrel echoes more loudly than a full
one.

7. If they have a talent they respect it. They
sacrifice to it rest, women, wine, vanity. . . . They
are proud of their talent. . . . Besides, they are
fastidious.

* Probably Palmin, a minor poet. Translator's Note.

54 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

8. They develop the aesthetic feeling in them-
selves. They cannot go to sleep in their clothes,
see cracks full of bugs on the walls, breathe bad
air, walk on a floor that has been spat upon, cook
their meals over an oil stove. They seek as far as
possible to restrain and ennoble the sexual instinct.
. . . What they want in a woman is not a bed-fel-
low . . . they do not ask for the cleverness which
shows itself in continual lying. They want especially,
if they are artists, freshness, elegance, humanity, the
capacity for motherhood. . . . They do not swill
vodka at all hours of the day and night, do not sniff
at cupboards, for they are not pigs and know they
are not. They drink only when they are free, on
occasion. . . . For they want mens sana in cor-
pore sano.

And so on. This is what cultured people are like.
In order to be cultured and not to stand below the
level of your surroundings it is not enough to have
read "The Pickwick Papers" and learnt a mono-
logue from "Faust." . . .

What is needed is constant work, day and night,
constant reading, study, will. . . . Every hour is
precious for it. ... Come to us, smash the vodka
bottle, lie down and read. . . . Turgenev, if you
like, whom you have not read.

You must drop your vanity, you are not a child
. . . you will soon be thirty. It is time !

I expect you. . . . We all expect you.
***** *

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 55

To MADAME M. V. KISELYOV.

Moscow,
January 14, 1887.

. . . Even your praise of "On the Road" has not
oftened my anger as an author, and I hasten to
venge myself for "Mire." Be on your guard, and
atch hold of the back of a chair that you may not
aint. Well, I begin.

One meets every critical article with a silent bow
ven if it is abusive and unjust such is the literary
itiquette. It is not the thing to answer, and all
vho do answer are justly blamed foi excessive
r anity. But since your criticism has the nature of
'an evening conversation on the steps of the Bab-
dno lodge" . . . and as, without touching on the
iterary aspects of the story, it raises general ques-
ions of principle, I shall not be sinning against the
etiquette if I allow myself to continue our conver-
.ation.

In the first place, I, like you, do not like litera-
ure of the kind we are discussing. As a reader and
'a private resident" I am glad to avoid it, but if you
isk my honest and sincere opinion about it, I shall
say that it is still an open question whether it has a
right to exist, and no one has yet settled it. ...
Neither you nor I, nor all the critics in the world,
have any trustworthy data that would give them the
right to reject such literature. I do not know which
are right: Homer, Shakespeare, Lopez da Vega,
and, speaking generally, the ancients who were not
afraid to rummage in the "muck heap," but were
morally far more stable than we are, or the modern
writers, priggish on paper but coldly cynical in their

56 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

souls and in life. I do not know which has bad
taste the Greeks who were not ashamed to describe
love as it really is in beautiful nature, or the readers
of Gaboriau, Marlitz, Pierre Bobo.* Like the
problems of non-resistance to evil, of free will, etc.,
this question can only be settled in the future. We
can only refer to it, but are not competent to decide
it. Reference to Turgenev and Tolstoy who
avoided the "muck heap" does not throw light on
the question. Their fastidiousness does not prove
anything; why, before them there was a generation
of writers who regarded as dirty not only accounts of
"the dregs and scum." but even descriptions of peas-
ants and of officials below the rank of titular coun-
cillor. Besides, one period, however brilliant, does
not entitle us to draw conclusions in favour of
this or that literary tendency. Reference to the
demoralizing effects of the literary tendency we are
discussing does not decide the question either.
Everything in this world is relative and approximate.
There are people who can be demoralized even by
children's books, and who read with particular pleas-
ure the piquant passages in the Psalms and in
Solomon's Proverbs, while there are others who be-
come only the purer from closer knowledge of the
filthy side of life. Political and social writers,
lawyers, and doctors who are initiated into all the
mysteries of human sinfulness are not reputed to be
immoral; realistic writers are often more moral than
archimandrites. And, finally, no literature can
outdo real life in its cynicism, a wineglassful won't
make a man drunk when he has already emptied a
barrel.

* P. D. Boborykm.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 57

2. That the world swarms with "dregs and
urn" is perfectly true. Human nature is imper-
ct, and it would therefore be strange to see none
it righteous ones on earth. But to think that the
ity of literature is to unearth the pearl from the
fuse heap means to reject literature itself. "Ar-
stic" literature is only "art" in so far as it paints
e as it really is. Its vocation is to be absolutely
tie and honest. To narrow down its function to
e particular task of finding "pearls" is as deadly
r it as it would be to make Levitan draw a tree
ithout including the dirty bark and the yellow
aves. I agree that "pearls" are a good thing, but
en a writer is not a confectioner, not a provider of
emetics, not an entertainer; he is a man bound,
ider contract, by his sense of duty and his con-
ience; having put his hand to the plough he
ustn't turn back, and, however distasteful, he must
mquer his squeamishness and soil his imagination
ith the dirt of life. He is just like any ordinary
jporter. What would you say if a newspaper cor-
ispondent out of a feeling of fastidiousness or from

wish to please his readers would describe only
Diiest mayors, high-minded ladies, and virtuous rail-
ay contractors?

To a chemist nothing on earth is unclean. A
riter must be as objective as a chemist, he must
ty aside his personal subjective standpoint and
mst understand that muck heaps play a very respect-
ble part in a landscape, and that the evil passions
re as inherent in life as the good ones.

3. Writers are the children of their age, and there-
ire, like everybody else, must submit to the external
onditions of the life of the community. Thus, they

58 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

must be perfectly decent. This is the only thing
we have a right to ask of realistic writers. But you
say nothing against the form and executions of
"Mire." . . . And so I suppose I have been
decent.

4. I confess I seldom commune with my con-
science when I write. This is due to habit and the
brevity of my work. And so when I express this
or that opinion about literature, I do not take myself
into account.

5. You write: "If I were the editor I would have
returned this feuilleton to you for your own good."
Why not go further? Why not muzzle the editors
themselves who publish such stories? Why not
send a reprimand to the Headquarters of the Press
Department for not suppressing immoral news-
papers?

The fate of literature would be sad indeed if it
were at the mercy of individual views. That is the
first thing. Secondly, there is no police which could
consider itself competent in literary matters. I
agree that one can't dispense with the reins and the
whip altogether, for knaves find their way even into
literature, but no thinking will discover a better
police for literature than the critics and the author's
own conscience. People have been trying to discover
such a police since the creation of the world, but
they have found nothing better.

Here you would like me to lose one hundred and
fifteen roubles and be put to shame by the editor;
others, your father among them, are delighted with
the story. Some send insulting letters to Suvorin,
pouring abuse on the paper and on me, etc. Who,
then, is right? Who is the true judge?

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 59

6. Further you write, "Leave such writing to
spiritless and unlucky scribblers such as Okrects,
Pince-Nez,* or Aloe.f

Allah forgive you if you were sincere when you
wrote those words ! A condescending and contemp-
tuous tone towards humble people simply because
they are humble does no credit to the heart. In liter-
ature the lower ranks are as necessary as in the army
this is what the head says, and the heart ought to
say still more.

Ough! I have wearied you with my drawn-out
reflections. Had I known my criticism would turn
out so long I would not have written it. Please for-
give me ! . . .

You have read my "On the Road." Well, how do
you like my courage? I write of "intellectual" sub-
jects and am not afraid. In Petersburg I excite a
regular furore. A short time ago I discoursed upon
non-resistance to evil, and also surprised the public.
On New Year's Day all the papers presented me with
a compliment, and in the December number of the
Russkoye Bogatstvo, in which Tolstoy writes, there
is an article thiity-two pages Ion 3 by Obolensky en-
titled "Chekhov and Korolenko." The fellow goes
into raptures over me and proves that I am more of
an artist than Korolenko. He is probably talking
rot, but, anyway, I am beginning to be conscious of
one merit of mine : I am the only writer who, without
ever publishing anything in the thick monthlies, has
merely on the strength of writing newspaper rubbish
won the attention of the lop-eared critics there has
been no instance of this before. ... At the end

* The pseudonym of Madame Kisselyov.

f The pseudonym of Chekhov's brother Alexandr.

60 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

of 1886 I felt as though I were a bone thrown to the
dogs.

... I have written a play* on four sheets of
paper. It will take fifteen to twenty minutes to act.
... It is much better to write small things than
big ones: they are unpretentious and successful.
. . . What more would you have? I wrote my
play in an hour and five minutes. I began another,
but have not finished it, for I have no time.

To HIS UNCLE, M. G. CHEKHOV.

Moscow,

January 18, 1887.

. . . During the holidays I was so overwhelmed
with work that on Mother's name-day I was almost
dropping with exhaustion.

I must tell you that in Petersburg I am now the
most fashionable writer. One can see that from
papers and magazines, which at the end of 1886 were
taken up with me, bandied my name about, and
praised me beyond my deserts. The result of this
growth of my literary reputation is that I get a num-
ber of orders and invitations and this is followed by
work at high pressure and exhaustion. My work is
nervous, disturbing, and involving strain. It is pub-
lic and responsible, which makes it doubly hard.
Every newspaper report about me agitates both me
and my family. . . . My stories are read at pub-
lic recitations, wherever I go people point at me, I
am overwhelmed with acquaintances, and so on, and
so on. I have not a day of peace, and feel as though
I were on thorns every moment.

* "Calchas," later called "Swansong."

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 61

. . . Volodya * is right. ... It is true that a
lan cannot possess the world, but a man can be
illed "the lord of the world." Tell Volodya that
ut of gratitude, reverence, or admiration of the
irtues of the best men those qualities which make
man exceptional and akin to the Deity peoples
id historians have a light to call their elect as they
ke, without being afraid of insulting God's greatness
* of raising a man to God. The fact is we exalt,
Dt a man as such, but his good qualities, just that di-
ne principle which he has succeeded in developing
himself to a high degree. Thus remarkable kings
e called "great," though bodily they may not be
Her than I. I. Loboda; the Pope is called "Holi-
'ss," the patriarch used to be called "Ecumenical,"
though he was not in relations with any planet but
e earth; Prince Vladimir was called "the lord of
e world," though he ruled only a small strip of
ound, princes are called "serene" and "illus-
ous," though a Swedish match is a thousand times
ighter than they are and so on. In using these
pressions we do not lie or exaggerate, but simply
press our delight, just as a mother does not lie when
3 calls her child "my golden one." It is the feel-
* of beauty that speaks in us, and beauty cannot
iure what is commonplace and trivial; it induces
to make comparisons which Volodya may, with his
ellect, pull to pieces, but which he will understand
h his heart. For instance, it is usual to com-
*e black eyes with the night, blue with the azure
the sky, curls with waves, etc., and even the
>le likes these comparisons; for instance, "Thy

He had apparently criticized the name Vladimir, which*
ns "lord of the world." Translator's Note

62 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

womb is more spacious than heaven," or "The
Sun of righteousness arises," "The rock of faith,"
etc. The feeling of beauty in man knows no
limits or bounds. This is why a Russian prince
may be called "the lord of the world"; and my
friend Volodya may have the same name, for
names are given to people, not for their merits,
but in honour and commemoration of remarkable
men of the past. ... If your young scholar does
not agree with me, I have one more argument which
will be sure to appeal to him: in exalting peo-
ple even to God we do not sin against love, but,
on the contrary, we express it. One must not
humiliate people that is the chief thing. Bet-
ter say to man "My angel" than hurl "Fool" at
his head though men are more like fools than they
are like angels.

To HIS SISTER.

TAGANROG,

April 2, 1887.

The journey from Moscow to Serpuhov was dull.
My fellow-travellers were practical persons of strong
character who did nothing but talk of the prices of
flour. . . .

... At twelve o'clock we were at Kursk. An
hour of waiting, a glass of vodka, a tidy-up and a
wash, and cabbage soup. Change to another train.
The carriage was crammed full. Immediately after
Kursk I made friends with my neighbours: a land-
owner from Harkov, as jocose as Sasha K.; a lady
who had just had an operation in Petersburg; a
police captain; an officer from Little Russia; and a

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 63

general in military uniform. We settled social
questions. The general's arguments were sound,
short, and liberal; the police captain was the type
of an old battered sinner of an hussar yearning for
amorous adventures. He had the affectations of a
governor: he opened his mouth long before he began
to speak, and having said a word he gave a long
growl like a dog, "er-r-r." The lady was injecting
morphia, and sent the men to fetch her ice at the
stations.

At Belgrade I had cabbage soup. We got to
Harkov at nine o'clock. A touching parting from
the police captain, the general and the others. . . .
I woke up at Slavyansk and sent you a postcard. A
new lot of passengers got in: a landowner and a
railway inspector. We talked of railways. The in-
spector told us how the Sevastopol railway stole
three hundred carriages from the Azov line and
painted them its own colour.*

. . . Twelve o'clock. Lovely weather. There
is a scent of the steppe and one heais the birds sing.
I see my old friends the ravens flying over the
steppe.

The barrows, the water-towers, the buildings
everything is familiar and well-remembered. At the
station I have a helping of remarkably good and rich
sorrel soup. Then I walk along the platform.
Young ladies. At an upper window at the far end
of the station sits a young girl (or a married lady,
goodness knows which) in a white blouse, beautiful
and languid. f I look at her, she looks at me. . . .
I put on my glasses, she does the same. . . . Oh,

* See the story "Cold Blood "
f See the story "Two Beauties "

64 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

lovely vision! I caught a catarrh of the heart and
continued my journey. The weather is devilishly,
revoltingly fine. Little Russians, oxen, ravens,
white huts, rivers, the line of the Donets railway with
one telegraph wire, daughters of landowners and
farmers, red dogs, the trees it all flits by like a
dream. ... It is hot. The inspector begins to
bore me. The rissoles and pies, half of which I have
not got through, begin to smell bitter. . . . I shove
them under somebody else's seat, together with the
remains of the vodka.

... I arrive at Taganrog. ... It gives one
the impression of Herculaneum and Pompeii ; there
are no people, and instead of mummies there are
sleepy drishpahs* and melon-shaped heads. All the
houses look flattened out, and as though they had
Jong needed replastering, the roofs want painting, the
shutters are closed, . . .

At eight o'clock in the evening my uncle, his
family, Irina, the dogs, the rats that live in the store-
room, the rabbits were fast asleep. There was noth-
ing for it but to go to bed too. I sleep on the draw-
ing-room sofa. The sofa has not inci eased in
length, and is as short as it was before, and so when
I go to bed I have either to stick up my legs in an
unseemly way or to let them hang down to the floor.
I think of Procrustes and his bed. . . .

April 6.

I wake up at five. The sky is grey. There is a
cold, unpleasant wind that reminds one of Moscow.
It is dull. I wait for the church bells and go to late
* Uneducated young men in the jargon of Taganrog.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 65

tfass. In the cathedral it is all very charming,
lecorous, and not boring. The choir sings well, not
it all in a plebeian style, and the congregation en-
irely consists of young ladies in olive-green dresses
ind chocolate-coloured jackets. . . .

April 8, 9, and 10.

Frightfully dull. It is cold and grey. . . .
During all my stay in Taganrog I could only do
ustice to the following things : remarkably good ring
oils sold at the market, the Santurninsky wine, fresh
caviare, excellent crabs and uncle's genuine hospital-
ty. Everything else is poor and not to be envied.
Fhe young ladies here are not bad, but it takes some
ime to get used to them. They are abrupt in their
movements, frivolous in their attitude to men, run
iway from their parents with actors, laugh loudly,
3asily fall in love, whistle to dogs, drink wine,
3tc. . . .

On Saturday I continued my journey. At the
Moskaya station the air is lovely and fresh, caviare
is seventy kopecks a pound. At Rostdov I had two
hours to wait, at Taganrog twenty. I spent the night
at an acquaintance's. The devil only knows what I
haven't spent a night on: on beds with bugs, on
sofas, settees, boxes. Last night I spent in a long
and narrow parlour on a sofa under a looking-
glass. . . .

April 25.

. . . Yesterday was the wedding a real Cossack
wedding with music, feminine bleating, and revolting
'drunkenness. . . . The bride is sixteen. They
were married in the cathedral. I acted as best man,

66 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

and was dressed in somebody else's evening suit with
fearfully wide trousers, and not a single stud on m*
shirt. In Moscow such a best man would have bee);
kicked out, but here I looked smarter than any-
one.

I saw many rich and eligible young ladies. Thf
choice is enormous, but I was so drunk all the tim j
that I took bottles for young ladies and young ladit-
for bottles. Probably owing to my diunken condi-
tion the local ladies found me witty and satirical!
The young ladies here are regular sheep, if one get-
up from her place and walks out of the room all th^>
otheis follow her. One of them, the boldest anJ
the most brainy, wishing to show that she is not a
stranger to social polish and subtlety, kept slapping
me on the hand and saying, "Oh, you wretch!"
though her face still retained its scared expression,
I taught her to say to her partners, "How naive you
are!"

The bride and bridegroom, probably because oi
the local custom of kissing every minute, kissed with
such gusto that their lips made a loud smack, and
it gave me a taste of sugary raisins in my mouth sai*\
a spasm in my left calf. The inflammation cf
the vein m my left leg got worse through their
kisses.

... At Zvyerevo I shall have to wait from nint
m the evening till five in the morning. Last timr
I spent the night there in a second-class railway-car-
riage on the siding. I went out of the carriage in
the night and outside I found veritable marvels: thf
moon, the limitless steppe, the barrows, the wilder-
ness; deathly stillness, and the carriages and the
railway lines sharply standing out from the dusk

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 67

seemed as though the world were dead. ... It
is a picture one would not forget for ages and

jes.

RAGOZINA BALK\,
April 30, 1887.

It is April 30. The evening is warm. There are
3rm-clouds about, and so one cannot see a thing,
le air is close and there is a smell of grass.
I am staying in the Ragozina Balka at K.'s.
lere is a small house with a thatched roof, and
rns made of flat stone. There are three rooms,
th earthen floors, crooked ceilings, and windows
at lift up and down instead of opening outwards.
The walls are covered with rifles, pistols,
bres and whips. The chest of drawers and the
ndow-sills are littered with caitridges, instruments
- mending rifles, tins of gunpowder, and bags of
3t. The furniture is lame and the veneer is com-
l off it. I have to sleep on a consumptive sofa,
ry hard, and not upholstered . . . Ash-trays and

such luxuries are not to be found within a radius

ten versts. . . . The first necessaries are con-
cuous by their absence, and one has in all weathers
slip out to the ravine, and one is warned to make
*e there is not a viper or some other creature under
j bushes.

The population consists of old K., his wife, Pyotr,
lossack officer with broad red stripes on his trousers,
yosha, Hahko (that is, Alexandr), Zoika, Ninka,
i shepherd Nikita and the cook Akulina. There
immense numbers of dogs who are furiously spite-

and don't let anyone pass them by day or by night.

ave to go about under escort, or there will be one

68 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

writer less in Russia. . . . The most cursed of
the dogs is Muhtar, an old cur on whose face dirty
tow hangs instead of wool. He hates me and
rushes at me with a roar every time I go out of the
house.

Now about food. In the morning there is tea,
eggs, ham and bacon fat. At midday, soup with
goose, roast goose with pickled sloes, or a turkey,
roast chicken, milk pudding, and sour milk. No
vodka or pepper allowed. At five o'clock they make
on a camp fire in the wood a porridge of millet and
bacon fat. In the evening there is tea, ham, and
all that has been left over from dinner.

The entertainments are: shooting bustards, mak-
ing bonfires, going to Ivanovka, shooting at a mark,
setting the dogs at one another, preparing gunpowder
paste for fireworks, talking politics, building turrets
of stone, etc.

The chief occupation is scientific farming, intro-
duced by the youthful Cossack, who bought five
roubles' worth of works on agriculture. The most
important part of this farming consists of wholesale
slaughter, which does not cease for a single moment
in the day. They kill sparrows, swallows, bumble-
bees, ants, magpies, crows to prevent them eating
bees; to prevent the bees from spoiling the blossom
on the fruit-trees they kill bees, and to prevent the
fruit-trees from exhausting the ground they cut down
the fruit-trees. One gets thus a regular circle which,
though somewhat original, is based on the latest data
of science.

We retire at nine in the evening. Sleep is dis-
turbed, for Belonozhkas and Muhtars howl in the
yard and Tseter furiously barks in answer to them

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 69

under my sofa. I am awakened by shooting:
ly hosts shoot with rifles from the windows at some
rumal which does damage to their crops. To leave
ic house at night one has to call the Cossack, for
therwise the dogs would tear one to bits.

The weather is fine. The grass is tall and in blos-
)m. I watch bees and men among whom I feel my-
ilf something like a Mikluha-Maklay. Last night
lere was a beautiful thunderstorm.

. . . The coal mines are not far off. To-morrow
lormng early I am going on a one-horse droshky to
/anovka (twenty-three versts) to fetch my letters
om the post.

. . . We eat turkeys' eggs. Turkeys lay eggs in
ic wood on last year's leaves. They kill hens,
sese, pigs, etc., by shooting here. The shooting is
icessant.

TAGANROG.

May 11.

. . . From K.'s I went to the Holy Mountains.
. . I came to Slavyansk on a dark evening,
he cabmen refuse to take me to the Holy Mountains
t night, and advise me to spend the night at Slav-
insk, which I did very willingly, for I felt broken
ad lame with pain. . . . The town is something
ke Gogol's Mirgorod; there is a hairdresser and a
atchmaker, so that one may hope that in another
lousand years there will be a telephone. The walls
ad fences are pasted with the advertisements of a
tenagerie. ... On green and dusty streets walk
igs, cows, and other domestic creatures. The
ouses look cordial and friendly, rather like kindly
randmothers; the pavements are soft, the streets

70 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

are wide, there is a smell of lilac and acacia in the
air; from the distance come the singing of a night-
ingale, the croaking of frogs, barking, and sounds of
a harmonium, of a woman screeching. ... I
stopped in Kulikov's hotel, wheie I took a room for
seventy-five kopecks. After sleeping on wooden
sofas and washtuhs it was a voluptuous sight to see
a bed with a mattress, a washstand. . . . Fragrant
breezes came in at the wide-open window and green
branches thrust themselves in. It was a glorious
morning. It was a holiday (May 6th) and the bells
were ringing in the cathedral. People were coming
out from mass. I saw police officers, justices of the
peace, military superintendents, and other principal-
ities and powers come out of the church. I bought
two kopecks' worth of sunflower seeds, and hired for
six roubles a carriage on springs to take me to the
Holy Mountains and back (in two days' time). I
drove out of the town through little streets literally
drowned in the green of cherry, apricot, and apple
trees. The birds sang unceasingly. Little Rus-
sians whom I met took off their caps, taking me
probably for Turgenev; my driver jumped every
minute off the box to put the harness to rights, or
to crack his whip at the boys who ran after the
carriage. . . . There were strings of pilgrims
along the road. On all sides there were white hills,
big and small. The horizon was bluish-white, the
rye was tall, oak copses were met with here and there
the only things lacking were crocodiles and rattle-
snakes.

I came to the Holy Mountains at twelve o'clock.
It is a remarkably beautiful and unique place. The
monastery stands on the bank of the river Donets at

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 71

e foot of a huge white rock covered with gardens,
ks, and ancient pines crowded together and over-
nging, one above another. It seems as if the trees
d not enough room on the rock, and as if some
rce were driving them upwards. . . . The pines
erally hang in the air and look as though they
ight fall any minute. Cuckoos and nightingales
ig night and day.

The monks, very pleasant people, gave me a very
ipleasant room with a pancake-like mattress. I
'ent two nights at the monastery and gatheied a
ass of impressions. While I was there some fifteen
ousand pilgrims assembled because of St. Nicolas'
ay; eight-ninths of them were old women. I did
)t know before that there were so many old women
the world; had I known, I would have shot myself
ng ago. About the monks, my acquaintance with
em and how I gave medical advice to the monks and
e old women, I will write to the Novoye Vremya
id tell you when we meet. The services are end-
ss: at midnight they ring for matins, at five for
irly mass, at nine for late mass, at three for the
ing of praise, at five for vespers, at six for the
>ecial prayers. Before every service one hears in
ie corridors the weeping sound of a bell, and a monk
ins along crying in the voice of a creditor who im-
lores his debtor to pay him at least five kopecks for
rouble :

"Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy upon us! Please
>me to matins!"

It is awkward to stay in one's room, and so one
3ts up and goes out. I have chosen a spot on the
ink of the Donets, where I sit during all the
;rvices.

72 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

I have bought an ikon for Auntie.* The food is
provided gratis by the monastery for all the fifteen
thousand: cabbage soup with dried fresh-water fish
and porndge. Both are good, and so is the rye

bread.

The church bells are wonderful. The choir is not
up to much. I took part in a religious procession
on boats.

TO V. G. KOROLENKO.

Moscow,
October 17, 1887.

... I am extremely glad to have met you. I
say it sincerely and with all my heart. In the first
place, I deeply value and love your talent ; it is dear
to me for many reasons. In the second, it seems to
me that if you and I live in this world another ten
or twenty years we shall be bound to find points of
contact. Of all the Russians now successfully writ-
ing I am the lightest and most frivolous ; I am looked
upon doubtfully; to speak the language of the poets,
I have loved my pure Muse but I have not respected
her; I have been unfaithful to her and often took her
to places that were not fit for her to go to. But you
are serious, strong, and faithful. The difference be-
tween us is great, as you see, but nevertheless when I
read you, and now when I have met you, I think that
we have something in common. I don't know if I
am right, but I like to think it.

* His mother's sister Translator's Note.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 73

To HIS BROTHER ALEXANDR.

Moscow,
November 20, 1887.

Well, the first performance* is over. I will tell
u all about it in detail. To begin with, Korsh
omised me ten rehearsals, but gave me only four,
which only two could be called rehearsals, for the
lier two were tournaments in which messieurs les
tistes exercised themselves in altercation and abuse,
ivydov and Glama were the only two who knew
sir parts; the others trusted to the prompter and
sir own inner conviction.

Act One. I am behind the stage in a small box
it looks like a prison cell. My family is in a
x of the benoire and is trembling. Contrary to my
pectations, I am cool and am conscious of no agita-
n. The actors are nervous and excited, and cross
smselves. The curtain goes up ... the actor
tose benefit night it is comes on. His uncertainty,
3 way that he forgets his part, and the wreath
it is presented to him make the play unrecog-
;able to me from the first sentences. Kiselevsky,
whom I had great hopes, did not deliver a single
rase correctly literally not a single one. He
d things of his own composition. In spite of
s and of the stage manager's blunders, the first
was a great success. There were many
Is.

Act Two. A lot of people on the stage. Visitors,
ey don't know their parts, make mistakes, talk
nsense. Every word cuts me like a knife in my
ik. But Muse ! this act, too, was a success.

* "Ivanov." Translator's Note.

74 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

There were calls for all the actors, and I was called
before the curtain twice. Congiatulations and suc-
cess.

Act Three. The acting is not bad. Enoimous
success. I had to come before the curtain three
times, and as I did so Davydov was shaking my
hand, and Glama, like Manilov, was pressing my
other hand to her heait. The triumph of talent and
virtue.

Act Four, Scene One. It does not go badly.
Calls before the curtain again. Then a long, wean-
some interval. The audience, not used to leaving
their seats and going to the refreshment bar between
two scenes, murmur. The curtain goes up. Fine:
through the arch one can see the supper table (the
wedding). The band plays flourishes. The
groomsmen come out: they are drunk, and so you see
they think they must behave like clowns and cut
capers. The horseplay and pot-house atmosphere
reduce me to despair. Then Kiselevsky comes out:
it is a poetical, moving passage, but my Kiselevsky
does not know his part B is drunk as a cobbler, and a
short poetical dialogue is transformed into something
tedious and disgusting: the public is perplexed.
At the end of the play the hero dies because he can-
not get over the insult he has received. The audi-
ence, grown cold and tired, does not understand this
death (the actors insisted on it; I have another ver-
sion). There are calls for the actors and for me.
During one of the calls I hear sounds of open hissing,
drowned by the clapping and stamping.

On the whole I feel tired and annoyed. It was
sickening though the play had considerable suc-
cess. . . .

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 75

Theatre-goers say that they had never seen such
srment in a theatre, such universal clapping and
dng, nor heard such discussions among the audi-
e as they saw and heard at my play. And it has
er happened before at Korsh's that the author has
n called after the second act.

November 24.

. . It has all subsided at last, and I sit as before

my writing-table and compose stories with un-

ibled spirit. You can't think what it was like!

I have already told you that at the first per-

nance there was such excitement in the audience

on the stage as the prompter, who has served at

theatre for thirty-two years, had never seen,
jy made an uproar, shouted, clapped and hissed;
he refreshment bar it almost came to fighting, and
he gallery the students wanted to throw someone

and two persons were removed by the police.

> excitement was general. . . .

. . The actors were in a state of nervous tension.

that I wrote to you and Maslov about their acting
attitude to their work must not, of course, go
further. There is much one has to excuse and

erstand. ... It turned out that the actress

> was doing the chief part in my play had
aughter lying dangerously ill how could she

like acting? Kurepin did well to praise the
>rs.

Tie next day after the performance there was a
ew by Pyotr Kitcheyev in the Moskovsky Listok.
calls my play impudently cynical and immoral
bish. The Moskovskiya Vyedomosti praised it.

. . If you read the play you will not understand

76 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

the excitement I have described to you ; you will find
nothing special in it. Nikolay, Shehtel, and Levitan
all of them painters assure me that on the stage
it is so original that it is quite strange to look at. In
reading one does not notice it.

To D. V. GRIGOROVITCH.

Moscow,
1887.

I have just read "Karelin's Dream," and I am
very much interested to know how far the dream you
describe really is a dream. I think your descrip-
tion of the workings of the brain and of the general
feeling of a person who is asleep is physiologically
correct and remarkably artistic. I lemember I read
two or three years ago a French story, in which the
author described the daughter of a minister, and prob
ably without himself suspecting it, gave a correct
medical description of hysteria. I thought at the
time that an artist's instinct may sometimes be worth
the brains of a scientist, that both have the same pur
pose, the same nature, and that perhaps in time, as
their methods become perfect, they are destined tt
become one vast prodigious force which now it i (
difficult even to imagine. . . . "Karelin's Dream'
has suggested to me similar thoughts, and to-day
willingly believe Buckle, who saw in Hamlet':
musings on the dust of Alexander the Great, Shakes
peare's knowledge of the law of the transmutation o
substance i.e., the power of the artist to run aheat
of the men of science. . . . Sleep is a subjectiv*
phenomenon, and the inner aspect of it one can orik
observe in oneself. But since the process of dream

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 77

the same in all men, every reader can, I think,

Karelin by his own standards, and every critic

und to be subjective. From my own personal

ience this is how I can formulate my im-

lon.

the first place the sensation of cold is given

DU with remarkable subtlety. When at night

uilt falls off I begin to dream of huge slippery

s, of cold autumnal water, naked banks and

is dim, misty, without a patch of blue sky; sad

Rejected like one who has lost his way, I look

e stones and feel that for some reason I cannot

[ crossing a deep river; I see then small tugs

drag huge barges, floating beams. . . . All

is infinitely grey, damp, and dismal. When

i from the river I come across the fallen ceme-

gates, funerals, my school-teachers. . . . And

'ie time I am cold through and through with

oppressive nightmare-like cold which is im-

ble in waking life, and which is only felt

those who are asleep. The first pages of

-elin's Dream" vividly brought it to my

ory especially the first half of page five,

e you speak of the cold and loneliness of the

^

think that had I been born in Petersburg and
tantly lived there, I should always dream of the
s of the Neva, the Senate Square, the massive
nments.

lien I feel cold in my sleep I dream of people.
I happened to have read a criticism in which
-eviewer blames you for introducing a man who
ilmost a minister," and thus spoiling the gener-
dignified tone of the story. I don't agree with

78 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

him. What spoils the tone is not the people but
your characterization of them, which in some places
interrupts the picture of the dream. One does
dream of people, and always of unpleasant ones.
... I, for instance, when I feel cold, always
dream of my teacher of scripture, a learned priest of
imposing appearance, who insulted my mother when
I was a little hoy; I dream of vindictive, implacable,
intriguing people, smiling with spiteful glee such
as one can never see in waking life. The laughter
at the carriage window is a characteristic symptom of
Karelin's nightmare. When in dreams one feels the
presence of some evil will, the inevitable ruin brought
about by some outside force, one always hears some-
thing like such laughter. . . . One dreams of peo-
ple one loves, too, but they generally appear to suffer
together with the dreamer.

But when my body gets accustomed to the cold,
or one of my family covers me up, the sensation of
cold, of loneliness, and of an oppressive evil will,
gradually disappears. . . . With the returning
warmth I begin to feel that I walk on soft carpets
or on grass, I see sunshine, women, children. . . .
The pictures change gradually, but more rapidly than
they do in waking life, so that on awaking it is difficult
to remember the transitions from one scene to an-
other. . . . This abruptness is well brought out in
your story, and increases the impression of the
dream.

Another natural fact you have noticed is also
extremely striking : dreamers express their moods m
outbursts of an acute kind, with childish genuineness,
like Karelin. Everyone knows that people weep and
cry out in their sleep much more often than they do

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 79

in waking life. This is probably due to the lack of
inhibition in sleep and of the impulses which make
us conceal things.

Forgive me, I so like your story that I am ready to
write you a dozen sheets, though I know I can tell
you nothing new or good. ... I restrain myself
and am silent, fearing to bore you and to say some-
thing silly.

I will say once more that your story is magnificent.
The public finds it "vague," but to a writer who gloats
over every line such vagueness is more transparent
than holy water. . . . Hard as I tried I could detect
only two small blots, even those are rather far-
fetched!

(l) I think that at the beginning of the story the
feeling of cold is soon blunted in the reader and be-
comes habitual, owing to the frequent repetition of
the word "cold," and (2), the word "glossy" is re-
peated too often.

There is nothing else I could find, and I feel that
as one is always feeling the need of refreshing models.
"Karelin's Dream" is a splendid event in my exist-
ence as an author. This is why I could not contain
myself and ventured to put before you some of my
thoughts and impressions.

There is little good I can say about myself. I
write not what I want to be writing, and I have not
enough energy or solitude to write as you advised me.

. . There are many good subjects jostling in my
head and that is all. I am sustained by hopes of
the future, and watch the present slip fruitlessly
away.

Forgive this long letter, and accept the sincere
good wishes of your devoted . p

SO LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

TO V. G. KOROLENKO.

Moscow,
January 9, 1888.

Following your friendly advice I began writing a
story* for the Syeverny Vyestnik. To begin with
I have attempted to describe the steppe, the people
who live there, and what I have experienced in the
steppe. It is a good subject, and I enjoy writing
about it, but unfortunately from lack of practice in
writing long things, and from fear of making it too
rambling, I fall into the opposite extreme: each page
turns out a compact whole like a short story, the
pictures accumulate, are crowded, and, getting in
each other's way, spoil the impression as a whole.
As a result one gets, not a picture in which all the de-
tails are merged into one whole like stars in the
heavens, but a mere diagram, a dry record of im-
pressions. A writer you, for instance will
understand me, but the reader will be bored and
curse.

. . . Your "Sokolinets" is, I think, the most re-
markable novel that has appeared of late. It is writ-
ten like a good musical composition, in accordance
with all the rules which an artist instinctively
divines. Altogether in the whole of your book
)ou are such a great artist, such a force, that even
your worst failings, which would have been the
nun of any other writer, pass unnoticed. For
instance, m the whole of your book there is an ob-
stinate exclusion of women, and ]
noticed it.

* "The Steppe."

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 81

To A. N. PLESHTCHEYEV.

Moscow,
February 5, 1888

. . I am longing to read Korolenko's story.

is my favourite of contemporary writers. His

>urs are rich and vivid, his style is irreproachable,

igh in places rather elaborate, his images are

le. Leontyev* is good too. He is not so mature

picturesque, but he is warmer than Korolenko,

e peaceful and feminine. . . . But, Allah

m, why do they both specialize 9 The first will

part with his convicts, and the second feeds his

ers with nothing but officers. ... I under-

i specialization in art such as genre., land-

e, history, but I cannot admit of such special-

as convicts, officers, priests. . . . This is

specialization but partiality. In Petersburg

do not care for Korolenko, and here in Mos-

we do not read Shtcheglov, but I fully believe

e future of both of them. Ah, if only we had

it critics!

February 9.

. You say you liked Dyrnovf as a subject,
creates such characters as the dare-devil Dymov
o be dissenters nor tramps, but downright
itionaries. . . . There never will be a revo-

in Russia, and Dymov will end by taking
nk or getting into prison. He is a superfluous

L. Shtcheglov.

e of the characters in "The Steppe." Translator's Note.

82 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

March 6.

It is devilishly cold, but the poor birds are already
flying to Russia! They are driven by homesickness
and love for their native land. If poets knew how
many millions of birds fall victims to their longing
and love for their homes, how many of them freeze
on the way, what agonies they endure on getting home
in March and at the beginning of April, they would
have sung their praises long ago! . . . Put your-
self in the place of a corncrake who does not fly but
walks all the way, or of a wild goose who gives him-
self up to man to escape being frozen. . . . Life is
hard in this world!

To I. L. SHTCHEGLOV.

Moscow,
April 18, 1888.

... In any case I am more often merry than sad,
though if one comes to think of it I am bound hand
and foot. . . . You, my dear man, have a flat, but
I have a whole house which, though a poor specimen,
is still a house, and one of two storeys, too! You
have a wife who will forgive your having no money,
and I have a whole organization which will collapse
if I don't earn a sufficient number of roubles a month
collapse and fall on my shoulders like a heavy
stone.

May 3.

... I have just sent a story* to the Syeverny
Vyestnik. I feel a little ashamed of it. It is flight-
fully dull, and there is so much discussion and
preaching in it that it is mawkish. I didn't like
* "The Lights "

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 83

to send it, but had to, for I need money as I do
air. . . .

I have had a letter from Leman. He tells me that
"we" (that is all of you Petersburg people) "have
agreed to print advertisements about each other's
work on our books," invites me to join, and warns
me that among the elect may be included only such
persons as have a "certain degree of solidarity with
is." I wrote to say that I agreed, and asked him
low does he know with whom I have solidarity and
Yith whom I have not? How fond of stuffiness you
ire in Petersburg! Don't you feel stifled with such
vords as "solidarity," "unity of young writers,"
'common interests," and so on? Solidarity and all
he rest of it I admit on the stock-exchange, in
jolitics, in religious affairs, etc., but solidarity among
r oung writers is impossible and unnecessary. . . .
Ve cannot feel and think in the same way, our
ims are different, or we have no aims whatever,
/e know each other little or not at all, and so
here is nothing on to which this solidarity could
e securely hooked. . . . And is there any need
or it? No, in order to help a colleague, to re-
pect his personality and his work, to refrain from
ossiping about him, envying him, telling him
es and being hypocritical, one does not need so
iuch to be a young writer as simply a man. . . .
et us be ordinary people, let us treat everybody
like, and then we shall not need any artificially
orked up solidarity. Insistent desire for par-
cular, professional, clique solidarity such as you
ant, will give rise to unconscious spying on
ic another, suspiciousness, control, and, with-
it wishing to do so, we shall become something

84 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

like Jesuits in relation to one another. ... I,
dear Jean, have no solidarity with you, but I
promise you as a literary man perfect freedom
so long as you live; that is, you may write where
and how you wish, you may think like Koreisha* if
you like, betray your convictions and tendencies
a thousand times, etc., etc., and my human rela-
tions with you will not alter one jot, and I will always
publish advertisements of your books on the wrappers
of mine.

To A. S. SUVORIN.

SUMY, MADAME LINTVARYOV'S
ESTATE,

May 30, 1888.

... I am staying on the bank of the Psyol, in
the lodge of an old signorial estate. ' I took the place
without seeing it, trusting to luck, and have not
regretted it so far. The river is wide and deep, with
plenty of islands, of fish and of crayfish. The banks
are beautiful, well-covered with grass and trees.
And best of all, there is so much space that I feel
as if for my one hundred roubles I have obtained
a right to live on an expanse of which one can see
no end. Nature and life here is built on the pat-
tern now so old-fashioned and rejected by magazine
editors. Nightingales sing night and day, dogs
bark in the distance, there are old neglected gardens,
sad and poetical estates shut up and deserted where
live the souls of beautiful women; old footmen,
relics of serfdom, on the brink of the grave; young
ladies longing for the most conventional love. In
addition to all these things, not far from me there

* A well-known religious fanatic in Moscow.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 85

is even such a hackneyed cliche as a water-mill (with
sixteen wheels) , with a miller, and his daughter who
always sits at the window, apparently waiting for
someone. All that I see and hear now seems
familiar to me from old novels and fairy-tales. The
only thing that has something new about it is a
mysterious bird, which sits somewheie far away in
the reeds, and night and day makes a noise that
sounds partly like a blow on an empty barrel and
partly like the mooing of a cow shut up in a barn.
Every Little Russian has seen this bird in the course
of his life, but everyone describes it differently, which
means that no one has seen it. ... Every day I
row to the mill, and in the evening I go to the
islands to fish with fishing maniacs from the Hari-
tovenko factory. Our conversations are some-
times interesting. On the eve of Whit Sunday all
the maniacs will spend the night on the islands and
fish all night; I, too. There are some splendid
types.

My hosts have turned out to be very nice and hos-
pitable people. It is a family worth studying. It
consists of six members. The old mother, a very
kind, rather flabby woman who has had suffering
enough in her life; she reads Schopenhauer and goes
,o church to hear the Song of Praise; she conscienti-
Dusly studies every number of the Vyestnik Evropi
md Syeverny Vyestnik, and knows writers I have not
Ireamed of; attaches much importance to the fact
hat once the painter Makovsky stayed in her lodge
md now a young writer is staying there; talking to
Pleshtcheyev she feels a holy thrill all over and re-
oices every minute that it has been "vouchsafed" to
icr to see the great poet.

86 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

Her eldest daughter, a woman doctor the pride
of the whole family and "a saint" as the peasants
call her really is remarkable. She has a tumour
on the brain, and in consequence of it she is totally
blind, has epileptic fits and constant headaches.
She knows what awaits her, and stoically with
amazing coolness speaks of her approaching death.
In the course of my medical practice I have grown
used to seeing people who were soon going to die,
and I have always felt strange when people whose
death was at hand talked, smiled, or wept in my pres-
ence ; but here, when I see on the verandah this blind
woman who laughs, jokes, or hears my stories read
to her, what begins to seem strange to me is not that
she is dying, but that we do not feel our own death,
and write stories as though we were never going to
die.

The second daughter, also a woman doctor, is a
gentle, shy, infinitely kind creature, loving to every-
'one. Patients are a regular tortuie to her, and she
is scrupulous to morbidity with them. At consulta-
tions we always disagree: I bring good tidings where
she sees death, and I double the doses which she pre-
scribes. But where death is obvious and inevitable
my lady doctor feels quite in an unprofessional way.
I was receiving patients with her one day at a
medical centre; a young Little Russian woman came
with a malignant tumour of the glands in her neck
and at the back of her head. The tumour had
spread so far that no treatment could be thought
of. And because the woman was at present feeling
no pain, but would in another six months die in ter-
rible agony, the doctor looked at her in such a guilty
way as though she were asking forgiveness for being

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 87

well, and ashamed that medical science was help-
less. She takes a zealous part in managing the house
and estate, and understands every detail of it. She
knows all about horses even. When the side horse
does not pull or gets restless, she knows how to help
matters and instructs the coachman. I believe she
has never hurt anyone, and it seems to me that she
has not been happy for a single instant and never
will be.

The third daughter, who has finished her studies
at Bezstuzhevka, is a vigorous, sunburnt young
girl with a loud voice. Her laugh can be heard a
mile away. She is a passionate Little Russian
patriot. She has built a school on the estate at her
own expense, and teaches the children Krylov's
fables translated into Little Russian. She goes to
Shevtchenko's grave as a Turk goes to Mecca. She
does not cut her hair, wears stays and a bustle, looks
after the housekeeping, is fond of laughing and sing-
ing.

The eldest son is a quiet, modest, intelligent, hard-
working young man with no talents; he has no pre-
tensions, and is apparently content with what life
has given him. He has been dismissed from the
University* just before taking his degree, but he
does not boast of it. He speaks little. He loves
fanning and the land and lives in harmony with the
peasants.

The second son is a young man mad over Tchai-
kovsky's being a genius. He dreams of living ac-
cording to Tolstoy.

******

* On political grounds, of course, is understood. Translator's
Note.

88 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

Pleshtcheyev is staying with us. They all look
upon him as a demi-god, consider themselves happy
if he bestows attention on somebody's junket, bring
him flowers, invite him everywhere, and so on. . . .
And he "listens and eats," and smokes his cigars
which give his admirers a headache. He is slow to
move, with the indolence of old age, but this does not
prevent the fair sex from taking him about in boats,
driving with him to the neighbommg estates, and
singing songs to him. Here he is by way of being
the same thing as in Petersburg i.e., an ikon which
is prayed to for being old and for having once hung
by the side of the miracle-working ikons. So far as
I am concerned I regard him not to speak of his be-
ing a very good, warm-hearted and sincere man as
a vessel full of traditions, interesting memories, and
good platitudes.

. . . What you say about "The Lights" is quite
just. You say that neither the conversation about
pessimism nor Kisotcha's story in any wav help to
solve the question of pessimism. It seems to me
it is not for writers of fiction to solve such questions
as that of God, of pessimism, etc. The writer's
business is simply to describe who has been speak-
ing about God or about pessimism, how, and in
what circumstances. The artist must be not the
judge of his characters and of their conversations.
but merely an impartial witness. I have heard a
desultory conversation of two Russians about pes-
simism a conversation which settles nothing and
I must report that conversation as I heard it; it is
for the jury, that is, for the readers, to decide on the
value of it. My business is merely to be talented
i.e., to know how to distinguish important state-

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 89

tnents from unimportant, how to throw light on the
characters, and to speak their language. Shtche-
*lov-Leontyev blames me for finishing the story with
he words, "There's no making out anything in this
-vorld." He thinks a writer who is a good psy-
chologist ought to be able to make it out that is
vhat he is a psychologist for. But I don't agree
vith him. It is time that writers, especially those
vho are artists, recognized that there is no making
>ut anything in this world, as once Socrates rec-
)gnized it, and Voltaire, too. The mob thinks it
mows and understands everything; and the more
tupid it is the wider it imagines its outlook to be.
\.nd if a writer whom the mob believes in has the
ourage to say that he does not understand anything
f what he sees, that alone will be something
;ained in the realm of thought and a great step in
dvance.

To A. N. PLESHTCHEYEV.

SUMY,
June 28, 1888.

. . . We have been to the province of Poltava.
^e went to the Smagins', and to Sorotchintsi. We
rove with a four-in-hand, in an ancestral, very com-
Drtable carriage. We had no end of laughter, ad-
entures, misunderstandings, halts, and meetings on
le way. ... If you had only seen the places
r here we stayed the night and the villages stretching
ight or ten versts through which we drove! . . .
That weddings we met on the road, what lovely music
r e heard in the evening stillness, and what a heavy
nell of fresh hay there was ! Really one might sell

90 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

one's soul to the devil for the pleasure of looking at
the warm evening sky, the pools and the rivulets re-
flecting the sad, languid sunset. . . .

. . . The Smagins' estate is "great and fertile,"
but old, neglected, and dead as last year's cob-
webs. The house has sunk, the doors won't shut,
the tiles in the stove squeeze one another out and
form angles, young suckers of cherries and plums
peep up between the cracks of the floors. In the
room where I slept a nightingale had made herself
a nest between the window and the shutter, and while
I was there little naked nightingales, looking like
undressed Jew babies, hatched out from the eggs.
Sedate storks live on the barn. At the beehouse
there is an old grandsire who remembers the King
Goroh* and Cleopatra of Egypt.

Everything is crumbling and decrepit, but poeti-
cal, sad, and beautiful in the extreme.

To HIS SISTER.

FEODOSIA,
July, 1888.

. . . The journey from Sumy to Harkov is fright-
fully dull. Going from Harkov to Simferopol one
might well die of boredom. The Crimean steppe is
depressing, monotonous, with no horizon, colourless
like Ivanenko's stories, and on the whole rather like
the tundra. . . . From Simferopol mountains be-
gin and, with them, beauty. Ravines, mountains,
ravines, mountains, poplars stick out from the ra-
vines, vineyards loom dark on the mountains all
this is bathed in moonlight, is new and wild, and sets

* The equivalent of Old King Cole. Translator's Note.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 91

one's imagination working in harmony with Gogol's
"Terrible Vengeance." Particularly fantastic are
the alternating precipices and tunnels when you
see now depths full of moonlight and now complete
sinister darkness. It is rather uncanny and delight-
ful. One feels it is something not Russian, some-
thing alien. I reached Sevastopol at night. The
town is beautiful in itself and beautiful because it
stands by a marvellous sea. The best in the sea is
its colour, and that one cannot describe. It is like
blue copperas. As to steamers and sa'ilmg vessels,
piers and harbours, what strikes one most of all is
the poverty of the Russians. Except the "popo-
vkas" which look like Moscow merchants' wives, and
two or three decent steamers, there is nothing to
speak of in the bay.

... In the morning it was deadly dull. Heat,
dust, thirst. ... In the harbour there was a
stench of ropes, and one caught glimpses of faces
burnt brick-red, sounds of a pulley, of the splash-
ing of dirty water, knocking, Tatar words, and all
sorts of uninteresting nonsense. You go up to a
steamer: men in rags, bathed in sweat and almost
baked by the sun, dizzy, with tatters on their backs
and shoulders, unload Portland cement; you stand
and look at them and the whole scene becomes so
remote, so alien, that one feels insufferably dull and
uninterested. It is entertaining to get on board
and set off, but it is rather a bore to sail and talk
to a crowd of passengers consisting of elements all
of which one knows by heart and is weary of already.
. . . Yalta is a mixture of something European
that reminds one of the views of Nice, with some-
thing cheap and shoddy. The box-like hotels in

92 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

which unhappy consumptives are pining, the im-
pudent Tatar faces, the ladies' bustles with their very
undisguised expression of something very abomina-
ble, the faces of the idle rich, longing for cheap ad-
ventures, the smell of perfumery instead of the scent
of the cedars and the sea, the miserable dirty pier,
the melancholy lights far out at sea, the prattle of
young ladies and gentlemen who have crowded here
in order to admire nature of which they have no idea
all this taken together produces such a depressing
effect and is so overwhelming that one begins to
blame oneself for being biassed and unfair. . . .
At five o'clock in the morning I arrived at Feodosia
a greyish-brown, dismal, and dull-looking little
town. There is no grass, the trees are wretched, the
soil is coarse and hopelessly poor. Everything is
burnt up by the sun, and only the sea smiles the
sea which has nothing to do with wretched little
towns or tourists. Sea bathing is so nice that when
I got into the water I began to laugh for no reason
at all. . . .

July 22.

. . . Yesterday we went to Shah-Mamai. Aivaz-
ovsky's estate, twenty-five versts from Feodosia. It
is a magnificent estate, rather like fairyland; such
estates may probably be seen in Persia. Aivaz-
ovsky* himself, a vigorous old man of seventy-five,
is a mixture of a good-natured Armenian and an
overfed bishop ; he is full of dignity, has soft hands,
and offers them like a general. He is not very in-
telligent, but is a complex nature worthy of atten-
tion. He combines in himself a general, a bishop,

* The famous marine painter Translator's Note.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 93

irtist, an Armenian, a nai've old peasant, and an
dlo. He is married to a young and very beau-
woman whom he rules with a rod of iron. He
lendly with Sultans, Shahs, and Amirs. He col-
rated with Ghnka in writing "Ruslan and Liud-
." He was a friend of Pushkin, but has never
him. He has not read a single book in his life,
in it is suggested to him that he should read
3thmg he answers, "Why should I read when I
1 opinions of my own?" I spent a whole day
is house and had dinner there. The dinner was
ully long, with endless toasts. By the way, at
dinner I was introduced to the lady doctor, wife
lie well-known professor. She is a fat, bulky
3 of flesh. If she were undressed and painted
ri she would look just like a frog. After talking
?r I mentally scratched her off the list of women
)rs. . . .

To HIS BROTHER MIHAIL.

July 28, 1888.
On the Seas Black, Caspian, and of Life.

. . A wretched little cargo steamer, Dir, is rac-
ull steam from Suhum to Poti. It is about mid-
. The little cabin the only one in the steamer
insufferably hot and stuffy There is a smell
urning, of rope, of fish and of the sea. One
3 the engine going "Boom-boom-boom." . . .
e are devils creaking up aloft and under the
The darkness is swaying in the cabin and the
rocks up and down. . . . One's stomach's
3 attention is 'concentrated on the bed, and, as
rh to find its level, it rolls the Seltzer water I
drunk right up to my throat and then lets it

94 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

down to my heels. Not to be sick over my clothes
in the dark I hastily put on my things and go out.
... It is dark. My feet stumble against some
invisible iron bars, a rope; wherever you step there
are barrels, sacks, rags. There is coal dust under
foot. In the dark I knock against a kind of grat-
ing: it is a cage with wild goats which I saw in the
daytime. They are awake and anxiously listening
to the rocking of the boat. By the cage sit two Turks
who are not asleep either. ... I grope my way
up the stairs to the captain's bridge. ... A warm
but violent and unpleasant wind tries to blow away
ray cap. . . . The steamer rocks. The mast in
front of the captain's bridge sways regularly and
leisurely like a metronome; I try to look away from
it, but my eyes will not obey me and, just like my
stomach, insist on following moving objects. . . .
The sky and the sea are dark, the shore is not in sight,
the deck looks a dark blur . . . there is not a single
light. ^

Behind me is a window ... I look into it and
see a man who looks attentively at something and
turns a wheel with an expression as though he were
playing the ninth symphony. . . . Next to me
'stands the little stout captain in tan shoes.
He talks to me of Caucasian emigrants, of the heat,
of winter storms, and at the same time looks in-
tently into the dark distance in the direction of the
shore.

"You seem to be going too much to the left
again he says to someone; or, "There ought to be
lights here_ .. Do you see them?"

?v' i""'" someone answers from the dark.
Climb up and look."

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 95

A dark figure appears on the bridge and leisurely
climbs up. In a minute we hear:

"Yes, sir."

I look to the left where the lights of the lighthouse
are supposed to be, borrow the captain's glasses, but
see nothing. . . . Half an hour passes, then an
hour. The mast sways regularly, the devils creak,
the wind makes dashes at my cap. ... It is not
pitch dark, but one feels uneasy.

Suddenly the captain dashes off somewhere to the
rear of the ship, crying, "You devil's doll!"

"To the left," he shouts anxiously at the top
of his voice. "To the left! ... To the ridit!

o

A-va-va-a!"

Incomprehensible words of command are heard.
The steamer starts, the devils give a creak. . . .
"A-va-va!" shouts the captain; at the bows a bell
is rung, on the black deck there are sounds of run-
ning, knocking, cries of anxiety. . . . The Dir
starts once more, puffs painfully, and apparently tries
to move backwards.

"What is it?" I ask, and feel something like a faint
terror. There is no answer.

"He'd like a collision, the devil's doll!" I hear the
captain's harsh shout. "To the left!"

Red lights appear in front, and suddenly among
the uproar is heard the whistling, not of the Dir, but
of some other steamer. . . . Now I understand it:
there is going to be a collision! The Dir puffs,
trembles, and does not move, as though waiting for
a signal to go down. . . . But just when I think
all is lost, the red lights appear on the left of us, and
the dark silhouette of a steamer can be dis-
cerned. ... A long black body sails past us,

96 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

guiltily blinks its red eyes, and gives a guilty
whistle. . . .

"Oof! What steamer is it?" I ask the captain.

The captain looks at the silhouette through his
glasses and replies:

"It is the Tweedie."

After a pause we begin to talk of the Vesta, which
collided with two steamers and went down. Under
the influence of this conversation the sea, the night
and the wind begin to seem hideous, created on pur-
pose for man's undoing, and I feel sorry as I look
at the fat little captain. . . . Something whispers
to me that this poor man, too, will sooner or later
sink to the bottom and be choked with salt water.*

I go back to my cabin. ... It is stuffy, and
there is a smell of cooking. My travelling compan-
ion, Suvorm-/i/5j is asleep already. ... I take off
all my clothes and go to bed. . . . The darkness
sways to and fro, the bed seems to breathe. . . .
Boom-boom-boom! Bathed in perspiration, breath-
less, and feeling an oppression all over with the rock-
ing, I ask myself, "What am I here for?"

I wake up. It is no longer dark. Wet all over,
with a nasty taste in my mouth, I dress and go out.
Everything is covered with dew. . . . The wild
goats look with human eyes through the grating of
their cage and seem to be asking "Why are we here?"
The captain stands still as before and looks intently
into the distance. . . .

A mountainous shore stretches on the left. . . .
Elborus is seen from behind the mountains.

* Chekhov's presentiment about the captain was partly ful-
filled that very autumn the Dir was wrecked on the shores of
Alupka.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 97

A blurred sun rises in the sky. . . . One can see
ic green valley of Rion and the Bay of Poti by the
de of it.

To N. A. LEIKIN.

SUMY,
August 12.

... I have been to the Crimea. I spent twelve
lys at Suvorin's in Feodosia, bathed, idled about;
have been to Aivazovsky's estate. From Feodosia
went by steamer to Batum. On the way I spent
ilf a day at Suhum a charming little town buried
luxuriant, un-Russian greenery, and one day
the Monastery, at New Athos. It is so lovely there
New Athos that there is no describing it: water-
lls, eucalyptuses, tea-plants, cypresses, olive-trees,
d, above all, sea and mountains, mountains, moun-
ins. From Athos and Suhum I went to Poti; the
ver Rion, renowned for its valley and its sturgeons,
close by. The vegetation is luxuriant. All the
eets are planted with poplars. Batum is a big
tnmercial and military, foreign-looking, cafe-
antant sort of town; you feel in it at eveiy step
it we have conquered the Turks. There is nothing
scial about it (except a great number of brothels) ,
t the surrounding country is charming. Particu-
ly fine is the road to Kars and the swift river Tcho-
:su.

The road from Batum to Tiflis is poetical and
ginal; you look all the time out of window and
ilaim: there are mountains, tunnels, rocks, rivers,
terfalls, big and little. But the road from
lis to Baku is the abomination of desolation,
bald plain, covered with sand and cieated for

98 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

Persians, tarantulas, and phalangas to live in.
There is not a single tree, there is no grass . . .
dreary as hell. . . . Baku and the Caspian Sea are
such rotten places that I would not agree to live
there for a million. There are no roofs, there are no
trees either; Persian faces everywhere, fifty degrees
Reaumur of heat, a smell of kerosine, the naphtha-
soaked mud scpielches under one's feet, the drinking
water is salt.

. . . You have seen the Caucasus. I believe you
have seen the Georgian Military Road, too. If you
have not been there yet, pawn your wives and chil-
dren and the Oskolki* and go. I have never in my
life seen anything like it. It is not a road, but un-
broken poetry, a wonderful, fantastic story written
by the Demon in love with Tamara.

To A. S. SUVORIN.

SUMY,
August 29, 1888.

. . . When as a boy I used to stay at my grand-
father's on Count Platov's estate, I had to sit from
sunrise to sunset by the thrashing machine and
write down the number of poods and pounds of corn
that had been thrashed; the whistling, the hissing,
and the bass note, like the sound of a whirling top,
that the machine makes at full speed, the creaking
of the wheels, the lazy tread of the oxen, the clouds
of dust, the grimy, perspiring faces of some three
score of men all this has stamped itself upon my
memory like the Lord's Prayer. And now, too, I

* Oskolki, (i e , "Chips," "Bits") the paper of which Leikin
was editor Translator's Note.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 99

have been spending hours at the thrashing and felt
intensely happy. When the thrashing engine is at
work it looks as though alive; it has a cunning, play-
ful expression, while the men and oxen look like
machines. In the district of Mirgorod few have
thrashing machines of their own, but everyone can
hire one. The engine goes about the whole prov-
ince drawn by six oxen and offers itself to all who can
pay for it.

Moscow,
September 11.

. . . You advise me not to hunt after two hares,
and not to think of medical work. I do not know
why one should not hunt two hares even in the literal
sense. ... I feel more confident and more satis-
fied with myself when I reflect that I have two pro-
fessions and not one. Medicine is my lawful wife
and literature is my mistress. When I get tired of
one I spend the night with the other. Though it's
disorderly, it's not so dull, and besides neither of
them loses anything from my infidelity. If I did not
have my medical work I doubt if I could have given
my leisure and my spare thoughts to literature.
There is no discipline in me.

Moscow,
October 27, 1888.

... In conversation with my literary colleagues
I always insist that it is not the artist's business to
solve problems that require a specialist's knowledge.
It is a bad thing if a writer tackles a subject he does
not understand. We have specialists for dealing
with special questions: it is their business to judge

100 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

of the commune, of the future of capitalism, of the
evils of drunkenness, of boots, of the diseases of
women. An artist must only judge of what he un-
derstands, his field is just as limited as that of any
other specialist I repeat this and insist on it al-
ways. That in his sphere there are no questions,
but only answers, can only be maintained by those
who have never written and have had no experience
of thinking in images. An artist observes, selects,
guesses, combines and this in itself presupposes a
problem: unless he had set himself a problem from
the very first there would be nothing to conjecture
and nothing to select. To put it briefly, I will end
by using the language of psychiatry: if one denies
that creative work involves problems and purposes,
one must admit that an artist creates without pre-
meditation or intention, in a state of aberration;
therefore, if an author boasted to me of having written
a novel without a preconceived design, under a sud-
den inspiration, I should call him mad.

You are right in demanding that an artist should
take an intelligent attitude to his work, but you
confuse two things: solving a problem and stating
a problem correctly. It is only the second that is
obligatory for the artist. In "Anna Karenin" and
"Evgeny Onyegin" not a single problem is solved,
but they satisfy you completely because all the prob-
lems are correctly stated in them. It is the business
of the judge to put the right questions, but the an-
swers must be given by the jury according to their own

lights.

******

. . . You say that the hero of my "Party" is a
character worth developing. Good Lord! I am not

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 101

senseless brute, you know, I understand that. I

nderstand that I cut the throats of my characters

nd spoil them, and that I waste good material. . . .

o tell you the truth, I would gladly have spent six

lonths over the "Party"; I like taking things easy,

nd see no attraction in publishing at headlong

3eed. I would willingly, with pleasure, with feel-

ig, in a leisurely way, describe the whole of my

ero, describe the state of his mind while his wife

as in labour, his trial, the horrid feeling he has

Fter he is acquitted; I would describe the midwife

id the doctors having tea in the middle of the night,

would describe the rain. ... It would give me

rthing but pleasure because I like to rummage

)out and dawdle. But what am I to do? I

3gm a story on September 10th with the thought

at I must finish it by October 5th at the latest;

I don't I shall fail the editor and be left without

oney. I let myself go at the beginning and write

ith an easy mind; but by the time I get to the

iddle I begin to grow timid and to fear that my

Dry will be too long: I have to remember that the

reverny Vyestnik has not much money, and that

am one of their expensive contributors. This is

ly the beginning of my stories is always very

omising and looks as though I were starting on

novel, the middle is huddled and timid, and the

d is, as in a short sketch, like fireworks. And

in planning a story one is bound to think first

out its framework: from a crowd of leading or

bordinate characters one selects one person only

fe or husband; one puts him on the canvas and

ints him alone, making him prominent, while the

lers one scatters over the canvas like small coin,

102 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

and the result is something like the vault of heaven:
one big moon and a number of very small stars
around it. But the moon is not a success because
it can only be understood if the stars too are intel-
ligible, and the stars are not worked out. And so
what I produce is not literature, but something like
the patching of Tnshka's coat. What am I to do?
I don't know, I don't know. I must trust to time
which heals all things.

To tell the truth again, I have not yet begun my
literary work, though I have received a literary
prize. Subjects for five stories and two novels are
languishing in my head. One of the novels was
thought of long ago, and some of the characters
have grown old without managing to be written. In
my head there is a whole army of people asking
to be let out and waiting for the word of com-
mand. All that I have written so far is rubbish in
comparison with what I should like to write and
should write with rapture. It is all the same to me
whether I write "The Party" or "The Lights," or
a vaudeville or a letter to a friend it is all dull,
spiritless, mechanical, and I get annoyed with
critics who attach any importance to "The Lights,"
for instance. I fancy that I deceive him with my
work just as I deceive many people with mv face,
which looks serious or over-cheerful. I don't like
being successful; the subjects which sit in my head
are annoyed and jealous of what has already been
written. I am vexed that the rubbish has been done
and the good things lie about in the lumber-room
like old books. Of course, in thus lamenting I
rather exaggerate, and much of what I say is only
my fancy, but there is a part of the truth in it, a good

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 103

>ig part of it. What do I call good? The images
vhich seem best to me, which I love and jealously
juard lest I spend and spoil them for the sake of some
Tarty" written against time. ... If my love is
nistaken, I am wrong, but then it may not be mis-
aken! I am either a fool and a conceited fellow
T I really am an organism capable of being a good
writer. All that I now write displeases and bores
tie, but what sits in my head interests, excites and
loves me from which I conclude that everybody
oes the wrong thing and I alone know the secret of
oing the right one. Most likely all writers think
lat. But the devil himself would break his neck
i these problems.

Money will not help me to decide what I am to do

nd how I am to act. An extra thousand roubles

ill not settle matters, and a hundred thousand is

castle in the air. Besides, when I have money

may be from lack of habit, I don't know I be-

)me extremely careless and idle ; the sea seems only

nee- deep to me then. ... I need time and soli-

ide.

November, 1888.

In the November number of the Syeverny Vyestnik
iere is an article by the poet Merezhkovsky about
>ur humble servant. It is a long article. I corn-
end to your attention the end of it; it is charac-
ristic. Merezhkovsky is still very young, a student
-of science I believe. Those who have assimilated
e wisdom of the scientific method and learned
think scientifically experience many alluring
mptations. Archimedes wanted to turn the
rth round, and the present day hot-heads

104 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

want by science to conceive the inconceivable,
to discover the physical laws of creative ait, to
detect the laws and the foimulae which are in-
stinctively felt by the artist and are followed by him
in creating music, novels, pictures, etc. Such
formulae probably exist in nature. We know that
A, B, C, do, re, mi, fa, sol, are found in nature,
and so are curves, straight lines, circles, squares,
green, blue, and red. . . We know that in certain
combinations all this produces a melody, or a poem
or a picture, just as simple chemical substances in
certain combinations produce a tiee, or a stone, or
the sea; but all we know is that the combination
exists, while the law of it is hidden from us. Those
who are masters of the scientific method feel in their
souls that a piece of music and a tree have something
in common, that both are built up in accordance
with equally uniform and simple laws. Hence the
question: What are these laws? And hence the
temptation to work out a physiology of creative art
(like Boborykin), or in the case of younger and
more diffident writers, to base their arguments on
nature and on the laws of nature (Merezhkovsky) .
There probably is such a thing as the physiology of
creative art, but we must nip in the bud our dreams
of discovering it. If the critics take up a scientific
attitude no good will come of it: they will waste
a dozen years write a lot of rubbish, make the
subject more obscure than ever and nothing more
It is always a good thing to think scientifically but
the trouble is that scientific thinking about creative
art will be bound to degenerate in the end into search-
ing for the "cells" or the "centres" which control
the creative faculty. Some stolid German will dis-

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 105

Dver these cells somewhere in the occipital lobes,

lother German will agree with him, a third will dis-

*ree, and a Russian will glance through the article

)out the cells and reel off an essay about it to the

yeverny Vyestnik. The Vyestnik Evropi will ciiti-

ze the essay, and for three years there will be in

ussia an epidemic of nonsense which will give

oney and popularity to blockheads and do nothing

it irritate intelligent people.

For those who are obsessed with the scientific

3thod and to whom God has given the rare talent

thinking scientifically, there is to my mind only

e way out the philosophy of creative art. One

ght collect together all the best works of art

it have been produced throughout the ages and,

h the help of the scientific method, discover the

nmon element in them which makes them like

3 another and conditions their value. That

union element will be the law. There is a great

J that works which are called immortal have in

imon; if this common element were excluded

TI each of them, a work would lose its charm

I its value. So that this universal something is

essary, and is the conditio sine qua non of every

k that claims to be immortal. It is of more use

r oung people to write critical articles than poetry.

"ezhkovsky writes smoothly and youthfully, but

3very page he loses heart, makes reservations

concessions, and this means that he is not clear

n the subject. He calls me a poet, he styles

stories "novelh" and my heroes "failures"

is, he follows the beaten track. It is time to

up these "failures," superfluous people, etc.,

to think of something original. Merezhkovsky

106 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

calls my monk* who composes the songs of praise
a failure. But how is he a failure? God grant us
all a life like his: he believed in God, and he had
enough to eat and he had the gift of composing
poetry. ... To divide men into the successful and
the unsuccessful is to look at human nature from a
narrow, preconceived point of view. Are you a suc-
cess or not? Am I? Was Napoleon? Is your
servant Vassily? What is the criterion ? One must
he a god to be able to tell successes from failures
without making a mistake.

Moscow,
November 7, 1888.

... It is not the public that is to blame for our
theatres being so wretched. The public is always
and everywhere the same: intelligent and stupid,
sympathetic and pitiless according to mood. It has
always been a flock which needs good shepherds and
dogs, and it has always gone in the direction in which
the shepherds and the dogs drove it. You are in-
dignant that it laughs at flat witticisms and applauds
sounding phrases ; but then the very same stupid pub-
lic fills the house to hear "Othello," and, listening to
the opera "Evgeny Onyegin," weeps when Tatyana
writes her letter.

. . . The water-carrier has stolen from somewhere
a Siberian kitten with long white fur and black eyes,
and brought it to us. This kitten takes people for
mice: when it sees anyone it lies flat on its stomach,
stalks one's feet and rushes at them. This morning
as I was pacing up and down the room it several
times stalked me, and a la tigre pounced at my boots.
* "Easter "Eve" Translators Note.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 107

I imagine the thought of being more terrible than
anyone in the house affords it the greatest de-
light.

November 11, 1888.

I finished to-day the story* for the Garshm
sbornik: it is such a load off my mind. In this story
I have told my own opinion which is of no interest
to anyone of such rare men as Garshm. I have
run to almost 2,000 lines. I speak at length about
prostitution, but settle nothing. Why do they write
nothing about prostitution in your paper? It is the
most fearful evil, you know. Our Sobolev street is
a regular slave-market.

November 15, 1888.

My "Party" has pleased the ladies. They sing
my praises wherever I go. It really isn't bad to be
a doctor and to understand what one is writing about.
The ladies say the description of the confinement is
true. In the story for the Garshin sbornik I have de-
scribed spiritual agony.

(No date), 1888.

. . . You say that writers are God's elect. I
will not contradict you. Shtcheglov calls me the
Potyomkin of literature, and so it is not for me to
speak of the thorny path, of disappointments, and
so on. I do not know whether I have ever suffered
more than shoemakers, mathematicians, or railway
guards do; I do not know who speaks through my
lips God or someone worse. I will allow myself
to mention only one little drawback which I have
experienced and you probably know from experience

* "A Nervous Breakdown."

108 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

also. It is this. You and I are fond of ordinary
people; but other people are fond of us because they
think we are not ordinary. Me, for instance, they
invite everywhere and regale me with food and drink
like a general at a wedding. My sister is indignant
that people on all sides invite her simply because
she is a writer's sister. No one wants to love the
ordinary people in us. Hence it follows that if in
the eyes of our friends we should appear to-moriow
as ordinary mortals, they will leave off loving us,
and will only pity us. And that is horrid. It is
horrid, too, that they like the veiy things in us which
we often dislike and despise in ourselves. It is hor-
rid that I was right when I wrote the story "The First-
Class Passenger," in which an engineer and a pro-
fessor talk about fame.

I am going away into the country. Hang them
all! You have Feodosia. By the way, about Feo-
dosia and the Tatars. The Tatars have been lobbed
of their land, but no one thinks of their welfare.
There ought to be Tatar schools. Write and suggest
that the money which is being spent on the sausage
Dorpat University, where useless Germans are study-
ing, should be devoted to schools for Tatars, who
are of use to Russia. I would write about it myself,
but I don't know how to.

December 23, 1888.

. . . There are moments when I completely lose
heart. For whom and for what do I write? For
the public? But I don't see it, and believe in it
less than I do in spooks: it is uneducated, badly
brought up, and its best elements are unfair and
insincere to us. I cannot make out whether this

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 109

mblic wants me or not. Burenin says that it does

lot, and that I waste my time on trifles ; the Academy

las given me a prize. The devil himself could not

lake head or tail of it. Write for the sake of

loney? But I never have any money, and not

eing used to having it I am almost indifferent to

For the sake of money I work apathetically.

/rite for the sake of praise? But praise merely

ritates me. Literary society, students, Plesh-

heyev, young ladies, etc., were enthusiastic in their

aises of my "Nervous Breakdown," but Grigoro-

tch is the only one who has noticed the description

the first snow. And so on, and so on. If we

d critics I should know that I provide material,

lether good or bad does not matter that to men

LO devote themselves to the study of life I am

necessary as a star is to an astronomer. And

in I would take trouble over my work and should

ow what I was working for. But as it is you, I,

iravlin, and the rest are like lunatics who write

)ks and plays to please themselves. To please

'self is, of comse, an excellent thing; one feels

pleasure while one is writing, but afterwards?

... I will shut up. In short, I am sorry for

yana Rep in,* not because she poisoned herself,

because she lived her life, died in agony, and

described absolutely to no purpose, without

good to anyone. A number of tribes, religions,

juages, civilizations, have vanished without a

e vanished because there were no historians

dologists. In the same way a number of lives

works of art disappear before our very eyes

ig to the complete absence of criticism. It

* Suvorm's play Translator's Note.

110 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

may be objected that critics would have nothing
to do because all modern works are poor and in-
significant. But this is a narrow way of looking
at things. Life must be studied not from the
pluses alone, but from the minuses too. The con-
viction that the "eighties" have not produced a
single writer may in itself provide material for five
volumes.

... I settled down last night to write a story
for the Novoye Vremya, but a woman appeared and
dragged me to see the poet Palmin who, when he was
drunk, had fallen and cut his forehead to the bone.
I was busy over the drunken fellow for nearly two
hours, was tired out, began to smell of iodoform all
over, felt cross, and came home exhausted. . . . Al-
together my life is a dreary one, and I begin to get
fits of hating people which used never to happen to
me before. Long stupid conversations, visitors, peo-
ple asking for help, and helping them to the extent
of one or two or three roubles, spending money on
cabs for the sake of patients who do not pay me a
penny altogether it is such a hotch-potch that I feel
like running away from home. People borrow
money from me and don't pay it back, they take my
books, they waste my time. . . . Blighted love is
the one thing that is missing.

December 26, 1888.

. . . You say that from compassion women fall in
love, from compassion they get married. . . . And
what about men? I don't like realistic writers to
slander women, but I don't like it either when
people put women on a pedestal and attempt to prove
that even if they are worse than men, anyway they

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 111

ingels and men scoundrels. Neither men nor
in are worth a brass farthing, but men are more
ind more intelligent.

December 30, 1888.

. This is how I understand my characters.*

Y is a gentleman, a University man, and not

kable in any way. He is excitable, hot-

d, easily carried away, honest and straight-

rd like most people of his class. He has lived

3 estate and served on the Zemstvo. What he

ien doing and how he has behaved, what he has

nterested in and enthusiastic over, can be seen

the following words of his, addressed to the

(Act I., Scene 5) : "Don't marry Jewesses

urotic women or blue-stockings . . . don't

vith thousands single-handed, don't wage war

udmills, don't batter your head against the

. . God preserve you from scientific farming,

rful schools, enthusiastic speeches. . . .'"

what he has in his past. Sarra, who has seen

entific farming and other crazes, says about

the doctor: "He is a remaikable man, doctor,

am sorry you did not meet him two or three

igo. Now he is depressed and melancholy,

m't talk or do anything, but in old days . . ..

arming he was!" (Act I., Scene 7). His past

tiful, as is generally the case with educated

is. There is not, or there hardly is, a single

i gentleman or University man who does not

f his past. The present is always worse than

t. Why? Because Russian excitability has

cific characteristic: it is quickly followed by

* In the play "Ivanov" Translator's Note

112 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

exhaustion. A man has scarcely left the class-room
before he rushes to take up a burden beyond his
strength; he tackles at once the schools, the peas-
ants, scientific farming, and the Vjestnik Evropi, he
makes speeches, writes to the minister, combats evil,
applauds good, falls in love, not in an ordinary, simple
way, but selects either a blue-stocking or a neurotic
or a Jewess, or even a prostitute whom he tries to
save, and so on, and so on. But by the time he is
thirty or thirty-five he begins to feel tired and bored.
He has not got decent moustaches yet, but he already
says with authority:

"Don't marry, my dear fellow. . . . Trust my
experience," or, "After all, what does Liberalism
come to? Between ourselves Katkov was often
right. ..." He is ready to reject the Zemstvo and
scientific farming, and science and love. My Ivanov
says to the doctor (Act I., Scene 5) : "You took your
degree only last year, my dear friend, you are still
young and vigorous, while I am thirty-five. I have
a right to advise you. . . ." That is how these
prematurely exhausted people talk. Further down,
sighing authoritatively, he advises: "Don't you marry
in this or that way (see above), but choose some-
thing commonplace, grey, with no vivid colours or
superfluous flourishes. Altogether build your life
according to the conventional pattern. The greyer
and more monotonous the background the better.
- . . The life that I have led how tirino- it is!
Ah, how tiring!"

Conscious of physical exhaustion and boredom
he does not understand what is the matter with
him and what has happened. Horrified, he says
to the doctor (Act I., Scene 3) : "Here you tell me

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 113

she is soon going to die and I feel neither love nor
pity, but a sort of emptiness and weariness. . . .
If one looks at me from outside it must be
horrible. I don't understand what is happen-
ing to my soul." Finding themselves in such a posi-
tion, narrow and unconscientious people generally
throw the whole blame on their environment, or
wnte themselves down as Hamlets and superfluous
people, and are satisfied with that. But Ivanov,
a straightforward man, openly says to the doctor and
to the public that he does not understand his own
mind. "I don't understand! I don't understand!"
That he really doesn't understand can be seen
From his long monologue m Act III , where, tete-a-
l ete with the public, he opens his heart to it and even
veeps.

The change that has taken place in him offends
us sense of what is fitting. He looks for the causes
mtside himself and fails to find them; he begins

look for them inside and finds only an indefinite
eeling of guilt. It is a Russian feeling. Whether
here is a death or illness in his family, whether
>e owes money or lends it, a Russian always feels
guilty. Ivanov talks all the time about being to
lame in some way, and the feeling of guilt increases

1 him at every juncture. In Act I. he says: "Sup-
ose I am terribly to blame, yet my thoughts are in a
ingle, my soul is in bondage to a sort of sloth, and
am incapable of understanding myself. ..." In
ct II. he says to Sasha: "My conscience aches day
tid night, I feel that I am profoundly to blame, but
i what exactly I have done wrong I cannot make
at."

To exhaustion, boredom, and the feeling of guilt

HUNT LIBRARY
OBWEGIE-MELLOH UBWERSiT!

114 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

add one more enemy: loneliness. Were Ivanov an
official, an actor, a priest, a professor, he would have
grown used to his position. But he lives on his
estate. He is in the country. His neighbours are
either drunkards or fond of cards, or are of the same
type as the doctor. None of them care about his
feelings or the change that has taken place in him.
He is lonely. Long winters, long evenings, an empty
garden, empty rooms, the grumbling Count, the ail-
ing wife. ... He has nowhere to go. This is why
he is every minute tortured by the question : what is
he to do with himself?

Now about his fifth enemy. Ivanov is tired and
does not understand himself, but life has nothing
to do with that! It makes its legitimate demands
upon him, and whether he will or no, he must settle
problems. His sick wife is a problem, his numerous
debts are a problem, Sasha flinging herself on his
neck is a problem. The way in which he settles all
these problems must be evident from his monologue
in Act III., and from the contents of the last two
acts. Men like Ivanov do not solve difficulties but
collapse under their weight. They lose their heads,
gesticulate, become nervous, complain, do silly
things, and finally, giving rein to their flabby, un-
disciplined nerves, lose the ground under their feet
and enter the class of the "broken down" and "mis-
understood."

Disappointment, apathy, nervous limpness and
exhaustion are the inevitable consequence of
extreme excitability, and such excitability is ex-
tremely characteristic of our young people. Take
literature. Take the present time. . . . Socialism
is one of the forms of this excitement. But where

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 115

5 socialism? You see it in Tihomirov's letter to the
'sar. The socialists are married and are criticizing
le Zemstvo. Where is Liberalism? Mihailovsky
imself says that all the labels have been mixed
p now. And what are all the Russian enthusi-
sms worth ? The war has wearied us, Bulgaria has
earied us till we can only be ironical about it.
ucchi has wearied us and so has the comic
3era.

Exhaustion (Dr. Bertensen will confirm this) finds
cpression not only in complaining or the sensation of
)redom. The life of an over-tired man cannot be

is very unequal. Over-tired people never lose
e capacity for becoming extremely excited, but can-
>t keep it up for long, and each excitement is fol-
wed by still greater apathy. . . . Graphically, it
uld be represented like this:

le fall, as you see, is not continuous but broken,
sha declares her love and Ivanov cries out in
stasy, "A new life!" and next morning he be-
ves in this new life as little as he does in spooks
le monologue in Act III.); his wife insults him,
d, fearfully worked up and beside himself with
ger, he flings a cruel insult at her. He is called a
mndrel. This is either fatal to his tottering brain,
stimulates him to a fresh paroxysm and he pro-
unces sentence on himself.

116 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

Not to tire you out altogether I pass now to Dr.
Lvov. He is the type of an honest, straightforward,
hotheaded, but narrow and uncompromising man.
Clever people say of such men: "He is stupid but
his heart is in the right place." Anything like width
of outlook or unreflecting feeling is foreign to Lvov.
He is the embodiment of a progiamme, a walking
tendency. He looks through a narrow frame at
every person and event, he judges everything accord-
ing to preconceived notions. Those who shout,
"Make way for honest labour!" are an object of
worship to him ; those who do not shout it are scoun-
drels and exploiters. There is no middle. He has
been brought up on Mihailov's* novels; at the theatre
he has seen on the stage "new men," i.e., the ex-
ploiters and sons of our age, painted by the modern
playwrights. He has stored it all up, and so much
so, that when he reads "Rudin" he is suie to be
asking himself, "Is Rudin a scoundrel or not?"
Literature and the stage have so educated him
that he approaches every character in real life and
in fiction with this question. ... It is not enough
for him that all men are sinners. He wants saints
and villains!

He was prejudiced before he came to the district.
He at once classed all the rich peasants as exploiters,
and Ivanov, whom he could not understand, as a
scoundrel. Why, the man has a sick wife and he
goes to see a rich lady neighbour of course he is a
scoundrel! It is obvious that he is killing his wife
in order to marry an heiress.

Lvov is honest and straightforward, and he blurts

* The author of second-rate works inculcating civic virtue
with a revolutionary bias. Translator's Note.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 117

out the truth without sparing himself. If necessary,
he will throw a bomb at a carriage, give a school in-
spector a blow in the face, or call a man a scoundrel.
He will not stop at anything. He never feels remorse
it is his mission as "an honest worker" to fight
"the poweis of darkness"!

Such people are useful, and are for the most part
attractive. To caricature them, even in the inteiests
of the play, is unfair and, indeed, unnecessary.
True, a caricature is more striking, and therefore
easier to understand, but it is better to put your
colour on too faint than too strong.

Now about the women. What do they love
Ivanov for? Sarra loves him because he is a fine
man, because he has enthusiasm, because he is
brilliant and speaks with as much heat as Lvov does
(Act I., Scene 7). She loves him so long as
he is excited and interesting; but when he begins
to grow misty in her eyes, and to lose definiteness
of outline, she ceases to understand him, and
at the end of Act III. speaks out plainly and
sharply.

Sasha is a young woman of the newest type. She
is well-educated, intelligent, honest, and so on. In
the realm of the blind a one-eyed man is king, and so
she favours Ivanov in spite of his being thirty-five.
He is better than anyone else. She knew him when
she was a child and saw his work close at hand, at the
period before he was exhausted. He is a friend of
her father's.

She is a female who is not won by the vivid plumage
of the male, not by their courage and dexterity, but
by their complaints, whinings and failures. She is
the sort of girl who loves a man when he is going

118 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

downhill. The moment Ivanov loses heart the young
lady is on the spot ! That's just what she was wait-
ing for. Just think of it, she now has such a holy,
such a grateful task before her! She will raise up
the fallen one, set him on his feet, make him happy.
... It is not Ivanov she loves, but this task.
Argenton in Daudet's book says, "Life is not a novel."
Sasha does not know this. She does not know that
for Ivanov love is only a fresh complication, an extra
stab in the back. And what comes of it? She
struggles with him for a whole year and, instead of
being raised, he sinks lower and lower.

... In my description of Ivanov there often oc-
curs the word "Russian." Don't be cross about it.
When I was writing the play I had in mind only the
things that really matter that is, only the typical
Russian characteristics. Thus the extreme excita-
bility, the feeling of- guilt, the liability to become
exhausted are purely Russian. Germans are never
excited, and that is why Germany knows nothing of
disappointed, superfluous, or over-tired people . . .
The excitability of the French is always maintained
at one and the same level, and makes no sudden
bounds or falls, and so a Frenchman is normally
excited down to a decrepit old age. In other words,
the French do not have to waste their strength in

i O

over-excitement; they spend their powers sensibly,
and do not go bankrupt.

. . . Ivanov and Lvov appear to my imagination
to be living people. I tell you honestly, in all con-
science, these men were born in my head, not by
accident, not out of sea foam, or preconceived "in-
tellectual" ideas. They are the result of observing
and studying life. They stand in my brain, and I

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 119

el that I have not falsified the truth nor exaggerated
a jot. If on paper they have not come out clear
id living, the fault is not in them but in me. for not
jing able to express my thoughts. It shows it is too
rly for me to begin writing plays.

January 7, 1889.

... I have been cherishing the bold dream of
imming up all that has hitherto been written about
hining, miserable people, and with my Ivanov say-
g the last word. It seemed to me that all Russian
welists and playwrights were drawn to depict de-
londent men, but that they all wrote instinctively,
iving no definite image or views on the subject. As
r as my design goes I was on the right track, but the
:ecution is good for nothing. I ought to have
aited' I am glad I did not listen to Giigorovitch
to or three years ago, and write a novel ! I can just
aagine what a lot of good material I should have
>oiled. He says: "Talent and freshness overcome
ferythmg." It is more true to say that talent and
eshness can spoil a great deal. In addition to
tenty of material and talent, one wants something
se which is no less important. One wants to be ma-
ire that is one thing; and for another the feeling
f personal freedom is essential, and that feeling has
ily recently begun to develop in me. I used not to
ave it before ; its place was successfully filled by my
ivolity, carelessness, and lack of respect for my work.

What writers belonging to the upper class have
;ceived from nature for nothing, plebeians acquire
t the cost of their youth. Write a story of how a
oung man, the son of a serf, who has served in a
hop, sung in a choir, been at a high school and a

120 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

university, who has been brought up to respect every-
one of higher rank and position, to kiss priests' hands,
to reverence other people's ideas, to be thankful for
every morsel of bread, who has been many times
whipped, who has trudged from one pupil to another
without goloshes, who has been used to fighting, and
tormenting animals, who has liked dining with his
rich relations, and been hypocritical before God and
men from the mere consciousness of his own insignifi-
cance write how this young man squeezes the slave
out of himself, drop by drop, and how waking
one beautiful morning he feels that he has no
longer a slave's blood in his veins but a real
man's. . . .

March 5, 1889.

. . . Last night I drove out of town and listened to
the gypsies. They sing well, the wild creatures.
Their singing reminds me of a train falling off a high
bank in a violent snow-storm: there is a lot of tur-
moil, screeching and banging.

... I bought Dostoevsky in your shop and am
now reading him. It is fine, but very long and in-
discreet. It is over-pretentious.

SUMY,

LlNTVARYOVS' ESTATE,
May, 1889

. . . Among other things I am reading Gontcha-
rov and wondering. I wonder how I could have
considered Gontcharov a first-rate writer. His
"Oblomov" is not really good. Oblomov himself is
exaggerated and is not so striking as to make it
worth while to write a whole book about him. A
flabby sluggard like so many, a commonplace, petty

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 121

iture without any complexity in it: to raise this
rson to the rank of a social type is to make too
uch of him. I ask myself, what would Oblomov
if he had not been a sluggard? And I answer
at he would not have been anything. And if so,
t him snore in peace. The other characters are
vial, with a flavour of Leikin about them; they aie
ken at random, and are half unreal. They are not
aractenstic of the epoch and give one nothing new.
oltz does not inspire me with any confidence The
thor says he is a splendid fellow, but I don't believe
m. He is a sly brute, who thinks very well of
mself and is very complacent. He is half unreal,
d three-quarters on stilts. Olga is unreal and is
agged in by the tail. And the chief tiouble is that
e whole novel is cold, cold, cold. I scratch out
Hitcharov from the list of my demi-gods.
But how direct, how powerful is Gogol, and what
artist he is! His "Marriage" alone is worth two
indred thousand roubles. It is simply delicious,
d that is all about it. He is the greatest of Rus-
m writers. In "The Inspector General" the first
t is the best, in "The Marriage" the third act is the
)rst. I am going to read it aloud to my people.

May 4, 1889.

. . . Nature is an excellent sedative. It pacifies
-that is, it makes one indifferent. And it is essen-
il in this world to be indifferent. Only those who
e indifferent are able to see things clearly, to be
3t and to work. Of course, I am only speaking of
telligent people of fine natures; the empty and
Ifish are indifferent enough any way.

You say that I have grown lazy. That does not

122 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

mean that I am now lazier than I used to be. I work
now as much as I did three or five years ago. To
work and to look as though I were working from nine
in the morning till dinner, and from evening tea till
bedtime has become a habit with me, and in that
respect I am just like a government clerk. And if
my work does not produce two novels a month or an
income of ten thousand, it is not my laziness that is
at fault, but my fundamental, psychological peculiari-
ties. I do not care enough for money to succeed in
medicine, and for literature I have not enough pas-
sion and therefore not enough talent. The fire
burns in me slowly and evenly, without suddenly
spluttering and flaring up, and this is why it does not
happen to me to write three or four signatures a
night, or to be so carried away by work as to prevent
myself from going to bed if I am sleepy; this is why
I commit no particular follies nor do anything par-
ticularly wise.

I am afraid that in this respect I resemble Gont-
charov, whom I don't like, who is ten heads taller
than I am in talent. I have not enough passion; add
to that this sort of lunacy: for the last two years I
have for no reason at all ceased to care about seeing
my work in print, have become indifferent to re-
views, to literary conversations, to gossip, to success
and failure, to good pay in short, I have gone down-
right silly. There is a sort of stagnation in my soul.
I explain it by the stagnation in my personal life. I
am not disappointed, I am not tired, I am not de-
pressed, but simply everything has suddenly become
less interesting. I must do something to rouse my-
self.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 123

May 7.

I have read Bourget's "Disciple" in the Russian
nslation. This is how it strikes me. Bourget is
ifted, very intelligent and cultured man. He is as
roughly acquainted with the method of the natural
?nces, and as imbued with it as though he had
en a good degree in science or medicine. He is
a stranger in the domain he proposes to deal with
i merit absent in Russian writers both new and old.

. . The novel is interesting. I have read it and
ierstand why you were so absorbed by it. It is
ver. interesting, in Dlaces wittv. somewhat fan-
tic. As to its defects, the chief of them is his pre-
tious crusade against materialism. Forgive me,

I can't understand such crusades. They never
d to anything and only bring needless confusion
3 people's thoughts. Whom is the crusade
dnst, and what is its object? Where is the enemy
1 what is there dangerous about him ? In the first
ce, the materialistic movement is not a school or
dency in the narrow journalistic sense; it is not
nething passing or accidental ; it is necessary, in-
table, and beyond the power of man. All that
3S on earth is bound to be materialistic. In
mals, in savages, in Moscow merchants, all that
higher and non-animal is conditioned by an un-
iscious instinct, while all the rest is material, and
y of course cannot help it. Beings of a higher
ler, thinking men, are also bound to be materialists,
ey seek for truth in matter, for there is nowhere
5 to seek for it, since they see, hear, and sense
tter alone. Of necessity they can only seek for
th where their microscopes, lancets, and knives

124 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

are of use to them. To forbid a man to follow the
materialistic line of thought is equivalent to forbid-
ding him to seek truth. Outside matter there is
neither knowledge nor experience, and consequently
there is no truth. . . .

I think that when dissecting a corpse, the most
inveterate spiritualist will be bound to ask him-
self, "Where is the soul here?" And if one knows
how great is the likeness between bodily and mental
diseases, and that both are treated by the same
remedies, one cannot help refusing to separate the
soul from the body.

... To speak of the danger and harm of material-
ism, and even more to fight against it, is, to say the
least, premature. We have not enough data to
draw up an indictment. There are many theories
and suppositions, but no facts. . . . The priests
complain of unbelief, immorality, and so on. There
is no unbelief. People believe in something, what-
ever it may be. ...

As to immorality, it is not people like Mendeleyev
but poets, abbots, and personages regularly attend-
ing Embassy churches, who have the reputation of
being perverted debauchees, libertines, and drunk-
ards.

In short, I cannot understand Bourget's crusade.
If, in starting upon it, he had at the same time taken
the trouble to point out to the materialists an in-
corporeal God in the sky, and to point to Him in such
a way that they should see Him, that would be an-
other matter, and I should understand what he is
driving at.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 125

May 14, 1889

. . . You want to know if the lady doctor hates
you as before. Alas! she has grown stouter and
much more resigned, which I do not like at all.
There are not many women doctors left on earth.
They are disappearing and dying out like the
branches in the Byelovyezhsky forest. Some die of
consumption, others become mystics, some marry
widowed squadron-commanders, some still try to
stand firm, but are obviously losing heart. Prob-
ably the first tailors and the first astrologers also died
out rapidly. Life is hard on those who have the
temerity first to enter upon an unknown path. The
vanguard always has a bad time of it.

May 15, 1889

If you have not gone abroad yet, I will answer
your letter about Bourget. . . . You are speaking
of the "right to live" of this or that branch of knowl-
edge; I am speaking of peace, not of rights. I want
people not to see war where there is none. Different
branches of knowledge have always lived together in
peace. Anatomy and belles-lettres are of equally
noble descent; they have the same purpose and the
same enemy the devil and there is absolutely
nothing for them to fight about. There is no
struggle for existence between them. If a man
knows about the circulation of the blood, he is rich ;
if he also learns the history of religion and the song
"I remember a marvellous moment," he becomes
richer, not poorer that is to say, we are concerned
with pluses alone. This is why geniuses have never

126 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

fought, and in Goethe the poet lived amicably side
by side with the scientist.

It is not branches of knowledge such as poetry
and anatomy, but errors that is to say, men that
fight with one another. When a man fails to under-
stand something he is conscious of a discord, and
seeks for the cause of it not in himself, as he should,
but outside himself hence the war with what he
does not understand. In the middle ages alchemy
was gradually in a natural, peaceful way changing
into chemistry, and astrology into astronomy; the
monks did not understand, saw a conflict and fought
against it. Just such a belligerent Spanish monk
was our Pisarev in the sixties.

Bourget, too, is fighting. You say he is not, and I
say he is. Imagine his novel falling into the hands
of a man whose children are studying in the faculty
of science, or of a bishop who is looking for a subject
for his Sunday sermon. Will the effect be anything
like peace? It will not. Or imagine the novel
catching the eye of an anatomist or a physiologist,
or any such. It will not breathe peace into any-
one's soul; it will irritate those who know and give
false ideas to those who don't.

To A. N. PLESHTCHEYEV.

Moscow,
September 30, 1889.

... I do not think I ought to change the title of
the story.* The wags who will, as you foretell,
make jokes about "A Dreary Story," are so dull that

* "A Dreary Story."

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 127

one need not fear them ; and if someone makes a good
joke I shall be glad to have given him the occasion
for it. The professor could not write about Katya's
husband because he did not know him, and Katya
does not say anything about him; besides, one of my
hero's chief characteristics is that he cares far too
little about the inner life of those who surround him,
and while people around him are weeping, making
mistakes, telling lies, he calmly talks about the the-
atre or literature. Were he a different sort of man.
Liza and Katya might not have come to grief.

October, 1889.

I am afraid of those who look for a tendency be-
tween the lines, and who are determined to regard
me either as a liberal or as a conservative. I am not
a liberal, not a conservative, not a believer in gradual
progress, not a monk, not an indifferentist. I should
like to be a free artist and nothing more, and I regret
that God has not given me the power to be one. I
hate lying and violence in all their forms, and am
equally repelled by the secretaries of consistories and
by Notovitch and Gradovsky. Pharisaism, stupidity
and despotism reign not in merchants' houses and
prisons alone. I see them in science, in literature,
in the younger generation. . . . That is why I have
no preference either for gendarmes, or for butchers,
or for scientists, or for writers, or for the younger
generation. I regard trade-marks and labels as a
superstition. My holy of holies is the human body,
health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love, and the
most absolute freedom freedom from violence and
lying, whatever forms they may take. This is the
programme I would follow if I were a great artist.

128 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

Moscow,
February 15, 1890.

I answer you, dear Alexey Nikolaevitch, at once
on receiving your letter. It was your name-day, and
I forgot it!! Forgive me, dear friend, and accept
my belated congratulations.

Did you really not like the "Kreutzer Sonata" ? I
don't say it is a work of genius for all time, of that I
am no judge; but to my thinking, among the mass of
all that is written now, here and abroad, one scarcely
could find anything else as powerful both in the
gravity of its conception and the beauty of its execu-
tion. To say nothing of its artistic merits, which in
places are striking, one must be grateful to the novel,
if only because it is keenly stimulating to thought.
As one reads it, one can scarcely refrain from crying
out: "That's true," or "That's absurd." It is true
it has some very annoying defects. Apart from all
those you enumerate, it has one for which one can-
not readily forgive the author that is, the audacity
with which Tolstoy holds forth about what he doesn't
know and is too obstinate to care to understand.
Thus his statements about syphilis, foundling hos-
pitals, the aversion of women for the sexual relation,
and so on, are not merely open to dispute, but show
him up as an ignoramus who has not, in the course
of his long life, taken the trouble to read two or three
books written by specialists. But yet these defects
fly away like feathers in the wind; one simply does
not notice them in face of the real worth of the story,
or, if one notices them, it is only with a little vexa-
tion that the story has not escaped the fate of all the

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 129

works of man, all imperfect and never free from
blemish.

My Petersburg friends and acquaintances are
angry with me? What for? For my not having
bored them enough with my presence, which has for
so long been a bore to myself! Soothe their minds.
Tell them that in Petersburg I ate a great many din-
ners and a great many suppers, but olid not fascinate
one lady; that every day I was confident of leaving
by the evening train, that I was detained by my
friends and by The Marine Almanack, the whole of
which I had to look through from the year 1852.
While I was in Petersburg, I got through in one
month more than my young friends would in a year.
Let them be angry, though !

x- * * * * *

I sit all day long reading and making extracts. I
have nothing in my head or on paper except Sahalin.
Mental obsession. Mania Sachalinosa.

Not long ago I dined with Madame Yermolov.*
A wild-flower thrust into the same nosegay with the
carnation was the more fragrant for the good com-
pany it had kept. So I, after dining with the star,
was aware of a halo round my head for two days
afterwards . . .

Good-bye, my dear friend; come and see
us. ...

* The celebrated actress. Translator's Note.

130 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

To A. S. SUVORIN.

Moscow,
February 23, 1890.

. . . My brother Alexandr is a slow-witted
creature; he is enthusiastic over Ornatsky's mission-
ary speech, in which he says that the natives do not
become Christians because they are waiting for a
special ukaz (that is, command) from the Tsar on
the subject and are waiting for their chiefs to be bap-
tized . . . (by force be it understood). This
eloquent pontifex says, too, that the native priests
ought, in view of their ascetic manner of life, to be
removed from the natives and put into special institu-
tions somewhat after the fashion of monasteries. A
nice set of people and no mistake! They have
wasted two million roubles, they send out every year
from the academy dozens of missionaries who cost
the treasury and the people large sums, yet they can-
not convert the natives, and what is more, want the
police and the military to help them with fire and
sword. . . .

If you have Madame Tsebnkov's article, do not
trouble to send it. Such articles give no information
and only waste time ; I want facts. Indeed, in Rus-
sia there is a terrible poverty of facts, and a terrible
abundance of reflections of all sorts.

February 28.

. . . To-morrow is spring, and within ten to fif-
teen days the larks will come back. But alas! the
coming spring seems strange to me, for I am going
away from it.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 131

In Sahalin there is very good fish, but there are no
hot drinks. . . .

Our geologists, ichthyologists, zoologists and so on,
are fearfully uneducated people. They write such a
vile jargon that it not only bores one to read it, but
one actually has at times to remodel the sentences be-
fore one can understand them; on the other hand,
they have solemnity and earnestness enough and to
spare. It's really beastly. . . .

March 4.

I have sent you to-day two stories : Filippov's (he
was here yesterday) and Yezhov's. I have not had
time to read the latter, and I think it is as well to say,
once for all, that I am not responsible for what I send
you. My handwriting on the address does not mean
that I like the story.

Poor Yezhov has been to see me; he sat near the
table crying: his young wife is in consumption. He
must take her at once to the south. To my ques-
tion whether he had money he answered that he had.
. . . It's vile catch-cold weather; the sky itself
is sneezing. I can't bear to look at it. ... I have
already begun writing of Sahalin. I have written
five pages. It reads all right, as though written with
intelligence and authority ... I quote foreign
authors second-hand, but minutely and in a tone as
though I could speak every foreign language per-
fectly. It's regular swindling.

Yezhov has upset me with his tears. He reminded
me of something, and I was sorry for him too.

Don't forget us sinners.

132 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

To N. M. LINTVARYOV.

Moscow,
March 5, 1890.

... As for me, I have a cough too, but I am alive
and I believe I'm well. I shan't be with you this
summer, as I am going in April, on affairs of my own,
to the island of Sahalin, and shall not be back till
December. I am going across Siberia (eleven thou-
sand versts) and shall come back by sea. I believe
Misha wrote to you as though someone were commis-
sioning me to go, but that's nonsense. I am com-
missioning myself to go, on my own account. There
are lots of bears and escaped convicts in Sahalin, so
that in case messieurs the wild beasts dine off me or
some tramp cuts my throat, I beg you not to remem-
ber evil against me.

Of course if I have the time and the skill to write
what I want to about Sahalin, I shall send you the
book immediately that it comes into the world; it
will be dull, a specialist's book consisting of nothing
but figures, but let me count upon your indulgence:
will suppress your yawns as you read it. ...

To A. S. SUVORIN.

Moscow,

March 9.

About Sahalin we are both mistaken, but you prob-
ably more than I. I am going in the full conviction
that my visit will furnish no contribution of value
either to literature or science: I have neither the
knowledge, nor the time, nor the ambition for that.
I have neither the plans of a Humboldt nor of a

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 133

man. I want to write some 100 to 200 pages,
so do something, however little, for medical
nee, which, as you are aware, I have neglected
ckingly. Possibly I shall not succeed in writing
thing, but still the expedition does not lose its
rm for me : reading, looking about me, and listen-
, I shall learn a great deal and gain experience,
ave not yet travelled, but thanks to the books
ch I have been compelled to read, I have learned
reat deal which anyone ought to be flogged for
knowing, and which I was so ignorant as not to
e known before. Moreover, I imagine the
rney will be six months of incessant hard work,
-sical and mental, and that is essential for me, for
n a Little Russian and have already begun to be
r . I must take myself in hand. My expedition
j be nonsense, obstinacy, a craze, but think a mo-
it and tell me what I am losing if I go. Time?
mey? Shall I suffer hardships? My time is
th nothing; money I never have anyway; as for
dships, I shall travel with horses, twenty-five to
ty days, not more, all the rest of the time I shall
dtting on the deck of a steamer or in a room, and
11 be continually bombarding you with letters,
suppose the expedition gives me nothing, yet
sly there will be 2 or 3 days out of the whole
rney which I shall remember all my life with
asy or bitterness, etc., etc. ... So that's how
s, sir. All that is unconvincing, but you know
write just as unconvincingly. For instance, you
that Sahalin is of no use and no interest to any-
. Can that be true? Sahalin can be useless and
nteresting only to a society which does not exile
usands of people to it and does not spend millions

134 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

of roubles on it. Except Australia in the past and
Cayenne, Sahalm is the only place where one can
study colonization by convicts; all Europe is in-
terested in it, and is it no use to us? Not more than
25 to 30 years ago our Russians exploring Sahalin
performed amazing feats which exalt them above hu-
manity, and that's no use to us: we don't know what
those men were, and simply sit within four walls and
complain that God has made man amiss. Sahalin is
a place of the most unbearable sufferings of which
man, free and captive, is capable. Those who work
near it and upon it have solved fearful, responsible
problems, and are still solving them. I am not senti-
mental, or I would say that we ought to go to places
like Sahalin to worship as the Turks go to Mecca,
and that sailors and gaolers ought to think of the
prison in Sahalin as military men think of Sevastopol.
From the books I have read and am reading, it is evi-
dent that we have sent millions of men to rot in prison,
have destroyed them casually, without thinking,
barbarously; we have driven men in fetters through
the cold ten thousand versts, have infected them with
syphilis, have depraved them, have multiplied
criminals, and the blame for all this we have thrown
upon the gaolers and red-nosed superintendents.
Now all educated Europe knows that it is not the
superintendents that are to blame, but all of us; yet
that has nothing to do with us, it is not interesting.
The vaunted sixties did nothing for the sick and for
prisoners, so breaking the chief commandment of
Christian civilization. In our day something is be-
ing done for the sick, nothing for prisoners; prison
management is entirely without interest for our
jurists. No, I assure you that Sahalin is of use and

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 135

of interest to us, and the only thing to regret is that
I am going there, and not someone else who knows
more about it and would be more able to rouse public
interest. Nothing much will come of my going there.
******

There have been disturbances among the students
on a giand scale here. It began with the Petrovsky
Academy, where the authorities forbade the students
to take young ladies to their rooms, suspecting the
ladies of politics as well as of prostitution. From
the Academy it spread to the University, where now
the students, surrounded by fully armed and mounted
Hectors and Achilleses with lances, make the follow-
ing demands:

1. Complete autonomy for the universities.

2. Complete freedom of teaching.

3. Free right of entrance to the university without
distinction of religious denomination, nationality,
sex, and social position.

4. Right of entrance to the university for the Jews
without restriction, and equal rights for them with
the other students.

5. Freedom of meeting and recognition of the
students' associations.

6. The establishment of a university and students'
tribunal.

7. The abolition of the police duties of the in-
spectors.

8. Lowering of the fees for instruction.

This I copied from a manifesto, with some abbre-
viations.

136 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

To I. L. SHTCHEGLOV.

Moscow,
March 22, 1890.

My greetings, dear Jean! Thanks for your long
letter and for the good will of which it is full from
beginning to end. I shall be delighted to read your
military story. Will it come out in the Easter num-
ber? It is a long time since I read anything of yours
or my own. You say that you want to give me a
harsh scolding "especially on the score of morality
and art," you speak vaguely of my crimes as deserv-
ing friendly censure, and threaten me with "an in-
fluential newspaper criticism." If you scratch out
the word "art," the whole phrase in quotation marks
becomes clearer, but gains a significance which, to tell
the truth, perplexes me not a little. Jean, what is it?
How is one to understand it? Can I really be differ-
ent in my ideas of morality from people like you, and
so much so as to deserve censure and even an influen-
tial article? I cannot take it that you mean some
subtle higher morality, as there are no lower, higher,
or medium moralities, but only one which Jesus
Christ gave us, and which now prevents you and me
and Barantsevitch from stealing, insulting, lying, and
so on. If I can trust the ease of my conscience, I
have never .by word or deed, in thought, or in my
stories, or in my farces, coveted my neighbour's wife,
nor his man, nor his ox, nor any of his cattle, I have
not stolen, nor been a hypocrite, I have not flattered
the great nor sought their favour, I have not black-
mailed, nor lived at other people's expense. It is
true I have waxed wanton and slothful, have laughed
heedlessly, have eaten too much and drunk too much

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 137

and been profligate. But all that is a personal mat-
ter, and all that does not deprive me of the right to
v hink that, as far as morals are concerned, I am noth-
ng out of the ordinary, one way or the other. Noth-
ng heroic and nothing scoundrelly I am just like
everyone else; I have many sins, but I am quits with
norality, as I pay for those sins with interest in the
liscomforts they bring with them. If you want to
ibuse me cruelly because I am not a hero, you'd bet-
er throw your cruelty out of the window, and instead
)f abuse, let me hear your charming tragic laugh
hat's better.

But of the word "art" I am terrified, as merchants'
vives are terrified of "brimstone." When people
alk to me of what is artistic and inartistic, of what is
Iramatic and not dramatic, of tendency, realism, and
o on, I am bewildered, hesitatingly assent, and
nswer with banal half-truths not worth a brass farth-
ng. I divide all works into two classes : those I like
nd those I don't. I have no other criterion, and if
r ou ask me why I like Shakespeare and don't like
'latovratsky, I don't venture to answer. Perhaps in
ime and as I grow wiser I may work out some
riterion, but meanwhile all conversations about what
3 "artistic" only weaiy me, and seem to me
ike a continuation of the scholastic disputations
nth which people wearied themselves in the middle
ges.

If criticism, on the authority of which you rely,
nows what you and I don't know, why has it up till
ow not spoken? why does it not reveal the truth and
be immutable laws? If it knew, believe me, it
rould long ago have shown us the true path and we
hould have known what to do, and Fofanov would

138 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

not have been in a madhouse, Garshin would have
been alive to-day, Barantsevitch would not have been
so depressed and we should not be so dull and ill at
ease as we are, and you would not feel drawn to the
theatre and I to Sahalin. But criticism maintains a
dignified silence or gets out of it with idle trashy
babble. If it seems to you authoritative it is because
it is stupid, conceited, impudent, and clamorous;
because it is an empty barrel one cannot help hearing.
But let us have done with that and sing something
out of a different opera. Please don't build any
literary hopes on my Sahahn trip. I am not going
for the sake of impressions 01 observations, but
simply for the sake of living for six months differently
from how I have lived hitherto. Don't rely on me,
old man ; if I am successful and clever enough to do
something, so much the better; if not, don't blame me.
I am going after Easter. I will send you in due time
my Sahalin address and minute instructions. . . .

To A. S. SUVORIN.

Moscow,
March 22, 1890.

. . . Yesterday a young lady told me that Profes-
sor Storozhenko had related to her the following
anecdote. The Sovereign liked the Kreutzer Sonata.
Pobyedonostsev, Lubimov, and the other cherubim
and seraphim, hastened to justify their attitude to
Tolstoy by showing his Majesty "Nikolay Palkin."
After reading it, his Majesty was so furious that he
ordered measures to be taken. Prince Dolgorukov
was informed. And so one fine day an adjutant
from Dolgorukov comes to Tolstoy and invites him to

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 139

at once to the prince. The latter replies: "Tell
prince that I only visit the houses of my acquain-
ices." The adjutant, overcome with confusion,
es away, and next day brings Tolstoy the official
ice demanding from him an explanation in regard
his "Nikolay Palkin." Tolstoy reads the docu-
nt and says :

'Tell his excellency that I have not for a long time
,t written anything for publication; I write only

my friends, and if my friends spread my writings
oad, they are responsible and not I. Tell him
t!"

''But I can't tell him that," cried the adjutant in
ror, "the prince will not believe me!"
''The prince will not believe his subordinates?
it's bad."

Two days later the adjutant comes again with a
sh document, and learns that Tolstoy has gone
ly to Yasnaya Polyana. That is the end of the
cdote.

NTow about the new movements. They flog in our
ice stations; a rate has been fixed; from a
sant they take ten kopecks for a beating, from a
kman twenty that's for the rods and the trouble,
isant women are flogged too. Not long ago, in
ir enthusiasm for beating in a police station, they
ashed a couple of budding lawyers, an incident
>n which Russhya Vyedomosti has a vague para-
ph to-day; an investigation has begun.
Inother sign of the times: the cabmen approve
he students' disturbances.

'They are making a riot for the poor to be taken
o study," they explain, "learning is not only for

rich." It is said that when a crowd of students

140 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

were being taken by night to the prison the populace
fell upon the gendarmes to rescue the students from
them. The populace is said to have shouted: "You
have set up flogging for us, but they stand up for us."

March 29.

. . . Fatigue is a relative matter. You say you
used to work twenty hours out of the twenty-four and
were not exhausted. But you know one may be ex-
hausted lying all day long on the sofa. You used to
write for twenty hours, but you know you were in per-
fect health all that time, you were stimulated by suc-
cess, defiance, a sense of your talent; you liked your
work, or you wouldn't have written. Your heir-ap-
parent sits up late, not because he has a talent for
journalism or a love for his work, but simply because
his father is an editor of a newspaper. The difference
is vast. He ought to have been a doctor or a lawyer,
to have had an income of two thousand roubles a year,
and published his articles not in Novoye Vremya and
not in the spirit of Novoye Vremya. Only those
young people can be accepted as healthy who refuse to
be reconciled with the old order and foolishly or
wisely struggle against it such is the will of nature
and it is the foundation of progress, while your son be-
gan by absorbing the old order. In our most intimate
talks he has never once abused Tatistchev or Burenin,
and that's a bad sign. You are a hundred times as
liberal as he is, and it ought to be the other way He
utters a listless and indolent protest, he soon drops his
voice and soon agrees, and altogether one has the im-
pression that he has no interest whatever in the con-
test; that is, he looks on at the cock-fight like a spec-
tator and has no cock of his own. And one ought to

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 141

ve one's own cock, else life is without interest,
e unfortunate thing, too, is that he is intelligent,
I great intelligence with little interest in life is like
reat machine which produces nothing, yet requires
reat deal of fuel and exhausts the owner. . . .

April 1

if ou abuse me for objectivity, calling it indifference

ijood and evil, lack of ideals and ideas, and so on.

i would have me, when I describe horse-stealers,

: "Stealing horses is an evil." But that has been

wn for ages without my saying so. Let the jury

^e them, it's my job simply to show what sort oi

pie they are. I write: you are dealing with

se-stealers, so let me tell you that they are not

yars but well-fed people, that they are people of a

;ial cult, and that horse-stealing is not simply

t but a passion. Of course it would be pleasant

3mbine art with a sermon, but for me personally

extremely difficult and almost impossible, owing

le conditions of technique. You see, to depict

e-stealers in seven hundred lines I must all the

speak and think in their tone and feel in their

t, otherwise, if I introduce subjectivity, the image

mes blurred and the story will not be as compact

11 short stories ought to be. When I write I

Dn entirely upon the reader to add for himself the

active elements that are lacking in the story.

April 11.

adame N. who used at one time to live in your
ly is here now. She married the artist N., a nice
edious man who wants at all costs to travel with
9 Sahalin to sketch. To refuse him my com-

142 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

pany I haven't the courage, but to travel with him
would be simple misery. He is going to Petersburg
in a day or two to sell his pictures, and at his wife's
request will call on you to ask jour advice. With a
view to this his wife came to ask me for a letter of
introduction to you. Be my benefactor, tell N. that
I am a drunkard, a swindler, a nihilist, a rowdy
chaiacter, and that it is out of the question to travel
with me, and that a journey in my company will do
nothing but upset him. Tell him he will be wasting
his time. Of course it would be very nice to have
my book illustrated, but when I learned that N. was
hoping to get not less than a thousand roubles for it,
I lost all appetite for illustrations. My dear fellow,
advise him against it ! ! ! Why it is your advice he
wants, the devil only knows.

April 15.

And so, my dear fnend, I am setting off on Wednes-
day or Thursday at latest Good-bye till Decem-
ber. Good luck m my absence. I received the
money, thank you very much, though fifteen hundred
roubles is a great deal ; I don't know where to put it.
... I feel as though I were pieparing for the bat-
tlefield, though I see no dangers before me but tooth-
ache, which I am sure to have on the journey. As I
am provided with nothing in the way of papers but
a passport, I may have unpleasant encounters with
the authorities, but that is a passing trouble. If they
refuse to show me something, I shall simply write in
my book that they wouldn't show it me, and that's
all, and I won't worry. In case I am drowned or
anything of that sort, you might keep it in mind that
all I have or may have in the future belongs to my
sister; she will pay my debts.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 143

I am taking my mother with me and putting her
down at the Troitsky Monastery; I am taking my
sister too, and leaving her at Kostroma. I am tell-
ing them I shall be back in September.

I shall go over the university in Tomsk. As the
only faculty there is medicine I shall not show my-
self an ignoramus.

I have bought myself a fur coat, an officei's water-
proof leather coat, big boots, and a big knife for cut-
ting sausage and hunting tigers. I am equipped
from head to foot.

To His SISTER.

STEAMER "ALEXANDR NEVSKY 23,"

April, 1890, early in the morning.

MY DEAR TlTNGUSEs!

Did you have rain when Ivan was coming back
from the monastery? In Yaroslavl there was such a
downpour that I had to swathe myself in my leather
chiton. My first impression of the Volga was
poisoned by the ram, by the tear-stained windows of
the cabin, and the wet nose of G., who came to meet
me at the station. In the rain Yaroslavl looks like
Zvenigorod, and its churches remind me of Perer-
\insky Monastery; there are lots of illiterate sign-
Loards, it's muddy, jackdaws with big heads strut
about the pavement.

In the steamer I made it my first duty to indulge
my talent that is, to sleep. When I woke I beheld
the sun. The Volga is not bad; water meadows,
monasteries bathed in sunshine, white churches; the
wide expanse is marvellous, wherever one looks it
would be a nice place to sit down and begin fishing.

144 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

Class ladies* wander about on the banks, nipping at
the green grass. The shepherd's horn can be heard
now and then. White gulls, looking like the
younger Drishka, hover over the water.
The steamer is not up to much. . . .

******

Kundasova is travelling with me. Where she is
going and with what object I don't know. When I
question her about it, she launches off into extremely
misty allusions about someone who has appointed a
tryst with her in a ravine near Kineshma, then goes
off into a wild giggle and begins stamping her feet
or prodding with her elbow whatever comes first.
We have passed both Kineshma and the ravine, but
she still goes on in the steamer, at which of course I
am very much pleased; by the way, yesterday for the
first time in my life I saw her eating. She eats no
less than other people, but she eats mechanically, as
though she were munching oats.

Kostroma is a nice town. I saw the stretch of
river on which the languid Levitan used to live. I
saw Kineshma, where I walked along the boulevard
and watched the local beaus. Here I went into the
chemist's shop to buy some Bertholet salts for my
longue, which was like leather after the medicine I
had taken. The chemist, on seeing Olga Petrovna,
was overcome with delight and confusion; she was
the same. They were evidently old acquaintances,
and judging from the conversation between them
they had walked more than once about the ravines
near Kineshma.

* I e , School chaperons, whose duty it is to sit in the class-
room while the girls are receiving instruction from a master.
Translator's Note.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 145

. . . It's rather cold and rather dull, but interest-
ing on the whole. The steamer whistles every
minute; its whistle is midway between the bray of
an ass and an ,Eolian harp. In five or six hours we
shall be in Nizhni. The sun is rising. I slept last
night artistically. My money is safe ; that is because
I am constantly pressing my hands on my stomach.

Very beautiful are the steam-tugs, dragging after
them four or five barges each; they look like some
fine young intellectual trying to run away while a
olebeian wife, mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and wife's
grandmother hold on to his coat-tails.

###*#*

The sun is hiding behind the clouds, the sky is
>vercast, and the broad Volga looks gloomy,
^evitan ought not to live on the Volga. It lays a
veight of gloom on the soul. Though it would not
>e bad to have an estate on its banks.

* * # -x- * *

If the waiter would wake I should ask him for
ome coffee; as it is, I have to drink water without
ny relish for it. My greetings to Maryushka and
)lga.*

Well, keep well and take care of yourselves. I
rill write regularly.

Your bored Volga-travelling

Homo Sachaliensis,
A. CHEKHOV.

* The Chekhovs' servants.

146 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

FROM THE STEAMER,

Evening, April 24, 1890.

MY DEAR TUNGUSES!

I am floating on the Kama, but I can't fix the
exact locality; I believe we are near Tchistopol. I
cannot extol the beauties of the scenery either, as it
is hellishly cold; the birches are not yet out, there
are still patches of snow here and there, bits of ice
float by in short, the picturesque has gone to the
dogs. I sit in the cabin, where people of all sorts
and conditions sit at the table, and listen to the con-
versation, wondering whether it is not time for me
to have tea. If I had my way I should do nothing
all day but eat ; as I haven't the money to be eating
all day long I sleep and sleep. I don't go up on deck,
it's cold. By night it rains and by day there is an un-
pleasant wind.

Oh, the caviare ! I eat it and eat and never have
enough.

... It is a pity I did not think to get myself a
little bag for tea and sugar. I have to order it a
glass at a time, which is tiresome and expensive. I
meant to buy some tea and sugar to-day at Kazan,
but I over-slept myself.

Rejoice, mother! I believe I stop twenty-four
houis at Ekaterinburg, and shall see the rela-
tions. Perhaps their hearts may be softened
and they will give me three roubles and an ounce of
tea.

From the conversation I am listening to at this
moment, I gather that the members of a judicial
tribunal are travelling with me. They are not gifted
persons. The merchants, who put in their word

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 147

om time to time seem, however, intelligent. One
)mes across fearfully rich people.

Sterlets are cheaper than mushrooms; you soon
3t sick of them. What more is there for me to
rite about? There is nothing. . . . There is a
eneral, though, and a lean fair man. The former
;eps dashing from his cabin to the deck and back
jam, and sending his photograph off somewhere;

e latter is got up to look like Nadson, and tries

ereby to give one to know that he is a writer. To-
ly he was mendaciously telling a lady that he had

book published by Suvorin; I, of course, put on

L expression of awe.

My money is all safe, except what I have

ten. They won't feed me for nothing, the scoun-

els.

I am neither gay nor bored, but there is a sort of

imbness in my soul. I like to sit without moving
speaking. To-day, for instance, I have scarcely

tered five words. That's not tiue, though: I

'ked to a priest on deck.

We begin to come across natives ; there are lots of

tars: they are a respectable and well-behaved peo-

a

I beg Father and Mother not to worry, and not to
agine dangers which do not exist.

******

Excuse me for writing about nothing but food. If
lid not write about food I should have to write
3ut cold, for I have no other subjects.

******

148 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

April 29, 1890.
MY DEAR TUNGUSES!

The Kama is a very dull river. To realise
its beauties one would have to be a native sitting
motionless on a barge beside a barrel of naphtha,
or a sack of dried fish, continually taking a pull at the
bottle. The river banks are bare, the trees are bare,
the earth is a dull brown, there are patches of snow,
and there is such a wind that the devil himself could
not blow as keenly and hatefully. When a cold
wind blows and ruffles up the water, which now after
the floods is the colour of coffee slops, one feels cold
and bored and miserable ; the strains of a concertina
on the bank sound dejected, figures in tattered sheep-
skins standing motionless on the barges that meet
us look as though they were petrified by some unend-
ing grief. The towns on the Kama are grey; one
would think the inhabitants were employed in the
manufacture of clouds, boredom, soaking fences and
mud in the streets, as their sole occupation. The
stopping-places are thronged with inhabitants of the
educated class, for whom the arrival of a steamer is
an event. . . .

... To judge from appearances not one of them
earns more than thirty-five roubles, and all of them
are ailing in some way.

I have told you already there are some legal gentle-
men in the steamer: the president of the court, one
of the judges, and the prosecutor. The president is
a hale and hearty old German who has embraced
Orthodoxy, is pious, a homoeopath, and evidently a
devotee of the sex. The judge is an old man such as
dear Nikolay used to draw; he walks bent double,

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 149

ughs, and is fond of facetious subjects. The prose-
[tor is a man of forty-three, dissatisfied with life, a
>eral, a sceptic, and a very good-natured fellow.
11 the journey these gentlemen have been occupied
eating, settling mighty questions and eating, read-
g and eating. There is a library on the steamer,
id I saw the prosecutor reading my "Tri the Twi-
jht." They began talking about me. Mamm-
biryak, who has described the Urals, is the author
3St liked in these parts. He is more talked of than
>lstoy.

I have been two and a half years sailing to Perm,

it seems to me. We reached there at two o'clock

the night. The train went at six o'clock in the

ening. I had to wait. It rained. Rain, cold,

id ... brrr! The Uralsky line is a good one.

. That is due to the abundance of business-like

ople here, factories, mines, and so on, for whom

le is precious.

Waking yesterday morning and looking out of the
Tiage window I felt an aversion for nature: the
th was white, trees covered with hoar-frost, and a
rular blizzard pursuing the train. Now isn't it
Bolting? Isn't it disgusting? ... I have no
loshes, I pulled on my big boots, and on my way to
j refreshment-room for coffee I made the whole
al region smell of tar. And when we got to
aterinburg there was rain, snow, and hail. I put
my leather coat. The cabs are something incon-
vable, wretched, dirty, drenched, without springs,
horse's four legs straddling, huge hoofs, gaunt

nes the droshkies here are a

msy parody of our britchkas. A tattered top is
t on to a britchka, that is all. And the more

150 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

exactly I describe the cabman here and his vehicle,
the more it will seem like a caricature. They drive
not on the middle of the road where it is jolting, but
near the gutter where it is muddy and soft. All the
cabmen are like Dobrolyubov.

In Russia all the towns are alike. Ekaterinburg
is exactly the same as Perm or Tula. The note of
the bells is magnificent, velvety I stopped at the
American Hotel (not at all bad), and at once sent
word of my arrival to A. M. S., telling him I meant to
stay in my hotel room for two days.

The people here inspire the newcomer with a feel-
ing akm to horror. They are big-browed, big-jawed,
broad-shouldered fellows with huge fists and tiny
eyes. They are born in the local iron foundries, and
at their birth a mechanic officiates instead of an ac-
coucheur. A specimen comes into your room with
a samovar or a bottle of water, and you expect him
every minute to murder you. I stand aside. This
morning just such a one came in, big-browed, big-
jawed, huge, towering up to the ceiling, seven feet
across the shoulders and wearing a fur coat too.

Well, I thought, this one will certainly murder me.
It appeared that this was our relation A. M. S We
began to talk. He is a member of the local Zemstvo
and manager of his cousin's mill, which is lighted by
electric light ; he is editor of the Ekaterinburg Week
which is under the censorship of the police-master
Baron Taube, is married and has two children, is
growing rich and getting fat and elderly, and lives
in a "substantial way." He says he has no time to
be bored. He advised me to visit the museum, the
factories, and the mines; I thanked him for his ad-
vice. He invited me to tea to-morrow evening; I

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 151

invited him to dine with me. He did not invite me
to dinner, and altogether did not press me very much
to visit him. From this mother may conclude that
the relations' heart is not softened. . . . Relations
aie a race in which I take no interest.

There is snow in the street, and I have purposely
let down the blind over the windows so as not to see
the Asiatic sight. I am sitting here waiting for an
answer from Tyumen to my telegram I tele-
graphed: "Tyumen. Kurbatov steamer line.
Reply paid. Inform me when the passenger steamer
starts Tomsk." It depends on the answer whether
I go by steamer or gallop fifteen hundred versts in
the slush of the thaw.

All night long they beat on sheets of iron at every
corner here. You need a head of iron not to go
crazy from the incessant clanging. To-day I tried
to make myself coffee. The result was a horrid mess.
I just drank it with a shrug. I looked at five sheets,
handled them, and did not take one. I am going
to-day to buy rubber overshoes.

***** *

Shall I find a letter from you at Irkutsk?
Ask Lika not to leave such big margins in her
letters.

Your Homo Sachahensis,

A. CHEKHOV.

152 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

To MADAME KISELYOV.

THE BANK OF THE IRTYSH,
May 7, 1890.

My greetings, honoured Marya Vladimirovna! I
meant to write you a farewell letter from Moscow,
but I had not time; I write to you now sitting in a
hut on the bank of the Irtysh.

It is night. This is how I have come to be here.
I am driving across the plain of Siberia. I have
already driven 715 versts; I have been transformed
from head to foot into a great martyr. This morning
a keen cold wind began blowing, and it began driz-
zling with the most detestable rain. I must observe
that there is no spring yet in Siberia. The earth is
brown, the trees are bare, and there are white patches
of snow wherever one looks ; I wear my fur coat and
felt overboots day and night. . . . Well, the
wind has been blowing since early morning. . . .
Heavy leaden clouds, dull brown earth, mud, rain,
wind. . . . Brrr! I drive on and on. ... I
drive on endlessly, and the weather does not improve.
Towards evening I am told at the station I can't go
on further, as everything is under water, the bridges
have been carried away, and so on. Knowing how
fond these drivers are of frightening one with the
elements so as to keep the traveller for the night (it
is to their interest), I did not believe them, and
ordered them to harness the three horses; and now
'alas for me! I had not driven more than five
versts when I saw the land on the bank of the Irtysh
all covered with great lakes, the road disappeared
under water, and the bridges on the road really had
been swept away or had decayed. I was prevented

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 153

-om turning back partly by obstinacy and partly by

le desire to get out of these dreary parts as quickly

s possible. We began driving through the lakes.

. . My God, I have never experienced anything

ke it in my life! The cutting wind, the cold, the

jathsome rain, and one had to get out of the chaise

not a covered one), if you please, and hold the

oises: at each little bridge one could only lead the

orses over one at a time. . . . What had I come

i? Where was I? All around, desert, dreariness;

le bare sullen bank of the Irtysh in sight. . . .

^e drive into the very biggest lake. Now I should

3 glad to turn back, but it is not easy. . . . We

ive on a long strip of land . . . the strip comes to

i end we go splash ! Again a strip of land, again

splash. . . . My hands were numb, and the wild

icks seemed jeering at us and floated in huge flocks

rer our heads. ... It got dark. The driver

id nothing he was bewildered. But at last we

ached the last strip that separated the Irtysh from

e lake. . . . The sloping bank of the Irtysh was

',arly three feet above the level ; it was of clay, bare,

llowed out, and looked slippery. The water was

uddy. . . . White waves splashed on the clay,

it the Irtysh itself made no roar or din, but gave

rth a strange sound as though someone were nailing

a coffin under the water. . . . The further bank

is a flat, disconsolate plain. . . . You often

earn of the Bozharovsky pool ; in the same way now

ihall dream of the Irtysh. . . .

But behold a ferry. We must be ferried across to

3 other side. A peasant shrinking from the rain

tnes out of a hut, and tells us that the ferry cannot

)ss now as it is too windy. . . . (The ferries are

154 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

worked by oars). He advises us to wait for calm
weather. . . .

And so I am sitting at night in a hut on a lake at
the very edge of the Irtysh. I feel a penetrating
dampness to the very mariow of my bones, and a
loneliness in my soul; I hear my Irtysh banging on
the coffins and the wind howling, and wonder where
I am, why I am here.

In the next room the peasants who work the ferry
and my driver are asleep. They are good-natured
people. But if they were bad people they could per-
fectly well rob me and drown me in the Irtysh. The
hut is the only one on the river bank; there would
be no witnesses.

The road to Tomsk is absolutely free from danger
as far as brigands are concerned. It isn't the fashion
even to talk of robbery. There is no stealing even
from travellers. When you go into a hut you can
leave your things outside and they will all be safe.

But they very nearly did kill me all the same.
Imagine the night just before dawn. ... I was
driving along in a chaise, thinking and thinking.
. . . All at once I see coming flying towards us at
full gallop a post-cart with three horses; my driver
had hardly time to turn to the right, the three horses
dashed by, and I noticed in it the driver who had to
take it back. . . . Behind it came another, also at
full speed; we had turned to the right, it turned to the
left. "We shall smash into each other," flashed into
my mind . . . one instant, and there was a crash,
the horses were mixed up in a black mass, my chaise
was rearing in the air, and I was rolling on the ground
with all my bags and boxes on the top of me. I leap
up and see a third troika dashing upon us. ...

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 155

My mother must have been praying for me that
ght, I suppose. If I had been asleep, or if the
ird troika had come immediately after the second, I
ould have been crushed to death or maimed. It
ipeared the foremost driver lashed on the horses,
iile the drivers in the second and the third carts
3re asleep and did not see us. The collision was
llowed by the blankest amazement on both sides,
en a storm of ferocious abuse. The traces were
rn, the shafts were broken, the yokes were lying
out on the road. . . . Ah, how the driveis swore!
t night, in that swearing turbulent crew, I felt in
ter solitude such as I have never felt before in my
'e. . . .

But my paper is running out.

To HIS SISTER.

THE VILLAGE OF YAR, 45 VERSTS FROM TOMSK,
May 14, 1890

My glorious mother, my splendid Masha, my sweet
isha, and all my household! At Ekaterinburg I
>t my reply telegram from Tyumen. "The first
earner to Tomsk goes on the 18th May." This
eant that, whether I liked it or not, I must do the
urney with horses. So I did. I drove out of
fumen on the third of May after spending in
caterinburg two or three days, which I devoted to
e repair of my coughing and haemorrhoidal per-
n. Besides the public posting service, one can get
ivate drivers that take one across Siberia. I
ose the latter: it is just the same. They put me,
e servant of God, into a basketwork chaise and
ove me with two horses ; one sits in the basket like

156 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

a goldfinch, looking at God's world and thinking of
nothing. . . . The plain of Siberia begins, I think,
from Ekaterinburg, and ends goodness knows where;
I should say it is very like our South Russian Steppe,
except for the little birch copses here and there and
the cold wind that stings one's cheeks. Spring has
not begun yet. There is no green at all, the woods
are bare, the snow has not thawed everywheie.
There is opaque ice on the lakes. On the ninth of
May there was a hard frost, and to-day, the fourteenth,
snow has fallen to the depth of three or four inches.
No one speaks of spring but the ducks. Ah, what
masses of ducks ! Never in my life have I seen such
abundance. They fly over one's head, they fly up
close to the chaise, swim on the lakes and in the pools
in short, with the poorest sort of gun I could have
shot a thousand in one day. One can hear the wild
geese calling. . . . There are lots of them here too.
One often comes upon a string of cranes or swans.
. . . Snipe and woodcock flutter about in the birch
copses. The hares which are not eaten or shot here,
stand on their hindlegs, and, pricking up their ears,
watch the passer-by with an inquisitive stare without
the slightest misgiving. They are so often running
across the road that to see them doing so is not con-
sidered a bad omen.

It's cold driving . . . ; I have my fur coat on.
My body is all right, but my feet are freezing. I
wrap them in the leather overcoat but it is no use.
... I have two pairs of breeches on. Well, one
drives on and on. ... Telegraph poles, pools,
birch copses flash by. Here we overtake some
emigrants, then an etape. . . . We meet tramps
with pots on their back; these gentry promenade all

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 157

ver the plain of Siberia without hindrance. One

ime they will murder some poor old woman to take

ier petticoat for their leg-wrappers; at another they

/ill strip from the verst post the metal plate with the

Lumber on it it might be useful; at another will

mash the head of some beggar or knock out the

yes of some brother exile; but they never touch

travellers. Altogether, travelling here is absolutely

afe as far as brigands are concerned. Neither the

lost-drivers nor the private ones from Tyumen to

r omsk remember an instance of any things being

tolen from a traveller. When you reach a station you

save your things outside; if you ask whether they

fon't be stolen, they merely smile in answer. It is

ot the thing even to speak of robbery and murder on

lie road I believe, if I were to lose my money in

lie station or in the chaise, the driver would certainly

ive it me if he found it, and would not boast of hav-

ig done so. Altogether the people here are good

nd kindly, and have excellent traditions. Their

ooms are simply furnished but clean, with claims to

ixury; the beds are soft, all feather mattresses and

ig pillows. The floors are painted or covered with

ome-made linen rugs. The explanation of this,

f course, is their prosperity, the fact that a family

as sixteen dessyatins* of black earth, and that excel-

3nt wheat grows in this black earth. (Wheaten

our costs thirty kopecks a pood here.f) But it can-

ot all be put down to prosperity and being well fed.

>ne must give some of the credit to their manner of

fe. When you go at night into a room where peo-

le are asleep, the nose is not aware of any stuffiness.

f "Russian smell." It is true one old woman when

* / e , about 48 acres f I.e., about 7^d for 36 Ib.

158 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

she handed me a teaspoon wiped it on the back of her
skirt; but they don't set you down to drink tea with-
out a tablecloth, and they don't search in each other's
heads in your presence, they don't put their fingers
inside the glass when they hand you milk or water;
the crockery is clean, the kvass is transparent as beer
in fact, there is a cleanliness of which our Little
Russians can only dream, yet the Little Russians are
far and away cleaner than the Great Russians ! They
make the most delicious bread here I over-ate my-
self with it at first. The pies and pancakes and
fritters and the fancy rolls, which remind one of
the spongy Little Russian ring rolls, are very good
too. . . . But all the rest is not for the European
stomach. For instance, I am regaled everywhere
with "duck broth." It's perfectly disgusting, a
muddy-looking liquid with bits of wild duck and un-
cooked onion floating in it. ... I once asked them
to make me some soup from meat and to fry me some
perch. They gave me soup too salt, dirty, with hard
bits of skin instead of meat ; and the perch was cooked
with the scales on it. They make their cabbage soup
from salt meat; they roast it too. They have just
served me some salt meat roasted: it's most repulsive;
1 chewed at it and gave it up. They drink brick tea.
It is a decoction of sage and beetles that's what it
is like in taste and appearance.

By the way, I brought from Ekaterinburg a quarter
of a pound of tea, five pounds of sugar, and three
lemons. It was not enough tea and there is nowhere
to buy any. In these scurvy little towns even the
government officials drink brick tea, and even the best
shops don't keep tea at more than one rouble fifty
kopecks a pound. I have to drink the sage brew.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 159

The distance apart of the posting stations depends
on the distance of the nearest villages from each other
that is, 20 to 40 versts. The villages here are
large, there are no little hamlets. There are churches
and schools everywhere, the huts are of wood and
there are some with two storeys.

Towards the evening the road and the puddles
begin to freeze, and at night there is a regular frost,
one wants an extra fur coat . . . Brrr! It's jolting,
for the mud is transformed into hard lumps. One's
soul is shaken inside out. . . . Towards daybreak
one is fearfully exhausted by the cold, by the jolting
and the jingle of the bells: one has a passionate
longing for warmth and a bed. While they change
horses one curls up in some corner and at once drops
asleep, and a minute later the driver pulls at one's
sleeve and says: "Get up, friend, it is time to start."
On the second night I had acute toothache in my heels.
It was unbearably painful. I wondered whether
they were frostbitten.

I can't write more though. The "president," that
is the district police inspector, has come. We have
made acquaintance and are beginning to talk. Good-
bye till to-morrow.

TOMSK,
May 16.

It seems my strong boots were the cause, being too
tight at the back. My sweet Misha, if you ever have
any children, which I have no doubt you will, the
advice I bequeath to them is not to run after cheap
goods. Cheapness in Russian goods is the label of
worthlessness. To my mind it is better to go bare-
foot than to wear cheap boots. Picture my agony!

160 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

I keep getting out of the chaise, sitting down on damp
ground and taking off my boots to rest my heels. So
comfortable in the frost! I had to buy felt over-
boots in Ishim. ... So I drove in felt boots till
they collapsed from the mud and the damp.

In the morning between five and six o'clock one
drinks tea at a hut. Tea on a journey is a great
blessing. I know its value now, and drink it with the
fury of a Yanov. It warms one through and drives
away sleep ; one eats a lot of bread with it, and in the
absence of other nourishment, bread has to be eaten
in great quantities; that is why peasants eat so much
bread and farinaceous food. One drinks tea and talks
with the peasant women, who are sensible, tender-
hearted, industrious, as well as being devoted mothers
and more free than in European Russia; their hus-
bands don't abuse or beat them, because they are as
tall, as strong, and as clever as their lords and masters
are. They act as drivers when their husbands are
away from home; they like making jokes. They are
not severe with their children, they spoil them. The
children sleep on soft beds and he as long as they like,
drink tea and eat with the men, and scold the latter
when they laugh at them affectionately. There is
no diphtheria. Malignant smallpox is prevalent here,
but strange to say, it is less contagious than in other
parts of the world; two or three catch it and die and
that is the end of the epidemic. There are no hos-
pitals or doctors. The doctoring is done by feld-
shers. Bleeding and cupping are done on a grand-
iose, brutal scale. I examined a Jew with cancer in
the liver. The Jew was exhausted, hardly breathing,
but that did not prevent the feldsher from cupping
him twelve times. Apropos of the Jews. Here they

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 161

L the land, work as drivers and ferry-men, trade and
3 called Krestyany,* because they are de jure and

facto Krestyany. They enjoy universal respect,
d according to the "president" they are not in-
;quently chosen as village elders. I saw a tall thin
w who scowled with disgust and spat when the
iresident" told indecent stories: a chaste soul; his
fe makes splendid fish-soup. The wife of the Jew
10 had cancer regaled me with pike caviare and with
Dst delicious white bread. One hears nothing of
ploitation by the Jews. And, by the way, about the
>les. There are a few exiles here, sent from Poland

1864. They are good, hospitable, and very re-
ted people. Some of them live in a very wealthy
ly; others are very poor, and serve as clerks at the
itions. Upon the amnesty the former went back

their own country, but soon returned to Siberia
ain here they are better off; the latter dream of
eir native land, though they are old and infirm.

Ishim a wealthy Pole, Pan Zalyessky, who has a
ughter like Sasha Kiselyov, for a rouble gave me an
cellent dinner and a room to sleep in ; he keeps an
n and has become a money-grubber to the marrow
his bones ; he fleeces everyone, but yet one feels the
)lish gentleman in his manner, in the way the meals
e served, in everything. He does not go back to
}land through greed, and through greed endures
ow till St. Nikolay's day; when he dies his daugh-
r, who was born at Ishim, will remain here for ever
id so will multiply the black eyes and soft features

Siberia' This casual intermixture of blood is to
e good, for the Siberian people are not beautiful,
here are no dark-haired people. Perhaps you

* /.e., Peasants, literally "Christians." Translator's Note.

162 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

would like me to write about the Tatars? Certainly.
There are very few of them here. They are good peo-
ple. In the province of Kazan everyone speaks well
of them, even the priests, and in Siberia they are
"better than the Russians" as the "president" said to
me in the presence of Russians, who assented to this
by their silence. My God, how rich Russia is in good
people! If it were not for the cold which deprives
Siberia of the summer, and if it were not for the of-
ficials who corrupt the peasants and the exiles, Siberia
would be the richest and happiest of lands.

I have nothing for dinner. Sensible people
usually take twenty pounds of provisions when they
go to Tomsk. It seems I was a fool and so I have fed
for a fortnight on nothing but milk and eggs, which
aie boiled so that the yolk is hard and the white is soft.
One is sick of such fare in two days. I have only
twice had dinner during the whole journey, not count-
ing the Jewess's fish-soup, which I swallowed after
I had had enough to eat with my tea. I have not
had any vodka : the Siberian vodka is disgusting, and
indeed, I got out of the hahit of taking it while I was
on the way to Ekaterinburg. One ought to drink
vodka: it stimulates the brain, dull and apathetic
from travelling, which makes one stupid and feeble.

Stop' I can't write: the editor of the Sibirsky
Vyestnik, N., a local Nozdryov, a diunkard and a
rake, has come to make my acquaintance.

N. has drunk some beer and gone away. I con-
tinue.

For the first three days of my journey my collar-
bones, my shoulders and my vertebrae ached from the
shaking and jolting. I couldn't stand or sit or lie.
. . . But on the other hand, all pains in my head

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 163

I chest have vanished, my appetite has developed
redibly, and my haemorrhoids have subsided com-
tely. The overstrain, the constant worry with
gage and so on, and perhaps the farewell drinking
ties in Moscow, had brought on spitting of blood in
mornings, which induced something like depres-
i, arousing gloomy thoughts, but towards the end
he journey it has left off; now I haven't even a
gh. It is a long time since I have coughed so lit-
is now, after being for a fortnight in the open air.
2r the first three days of travelling my body grew
i to the jolting, and in time I did not notice the
iing of midday and then of evening and night,
time flew by rapidly as it does in serious illness,
think it is scarcely midday when the peasants
"You ought to put up for the night, sir, or we
lose our way in the dark"; you look at your
ih, and it is actually eight o'clock.
'hey drive quickly, but the speed is nothing re-
kable. Probably I have come upon the roads in
condition, and in winter travelling would have
L quicker. They dash uphill at a gallop, and be-
setting off and before the driver gets on the
the horses need two or three men to hold them,
horses remind me of the fire brigade horses in
:ow. One day we nearly ran over an old woman,
another time almost dashed into an etape. Now,
d you like an adventure for which I am indebted
berian driving? Only I beg mother not to wail
lament, for it all ended well. On the 6th of
towards daybreak I was being driven with two
js by a very nice old man. It was a little chaise,
5 drowsy, and, to while away the time, watched
Beaming of zigzagging lights in the fields and

164 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

birch copses it was last year's grass on fire; it is
their habit here to burn it. Suddenly I hear the swift
rattle of wheels, a post-cart at full speed comes flying
towards us like a bird, my old man hastens to move
to the right, the three horses dash by, and I see in
the dusk a huge heavy post-cart with a driver for the
return journey in it. It was followed by a second cart
also going at full speed. We made haste to move
aside to the right. To my great amazement and
alarm the approaching cart moved not to its right,
but its left. ... I hardly had time to think, '"Good
heavens! we shall run into each other," when there
was a desperate crash, the horses were mixed up in
a dark blur, the yokes fell off, my chaise reared up
into the air, and I flew to the ground, and my lug-
gage on the top of me. But that was not all. . . .
A third cart was dashing upon us. This really ought
to have smashed me and my luggage to atoms but,
thank God! I was not asleep, I broke no bones in the
fall, and managed to jump up so quickly that I was
able to get out of the way. "Stop," I bawled to the
third cart, "Stop!" The third dashed up to the sec-
ond and stopped. Of course if I were able to sleep
in a chaise, or if the third cart had followed instantly
on the second, I should certainly have come back a
cripple or a headless horseman. The results of the
collision were broken shafts, torn traces, yokes and
luggage scattered on the ground, the horses scared
and harassed, and the alarming feeling that we had
just been in danger. It turned out that the first
driver had lashed up the horses; while in the other
two carts the drivers were asleep, and the horses
followed the first team with no one controlling them.
On recovering from the shock, my old man and the

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 165

ther three men fell to abusing each other ferociously.
)h, how they swore! I thought it would end in a
ght. You can't imagine the feeling of isolation in
ie middle of that savage swearing crew in the open
Duntry, just before dawn, in sight of the fires far
id near consuming the grass, but not warming the
)ld night air ! Oh, how heavy my heart was ! One
stened to the swearing, looked at the broken shafts
id at one's tormented luggage, and it seemed as
ough one were cast away in another world, as though
le would be crushed in a moment. . . . After an
>ur's abuse my old man began splicing together
e shafts with cord and tying up the traces ; my straps
ire forced into the service too. We got to the sta-
>n somehow, crawling along and stopping from time
time.

After five or six days rain with high winds began.

rained day and night. The leather overcoat came

the rescue and kept me safe from rain and wind.

s a wonderful coat. The mud was almost im-

ssable, the drivers began to be unwilling to go

at night. But what was worst of all, and what

.hall never forget, was crossing the rivers. One

dies a river at night. . . . One begins shouting

i so does the driver. . . . Rain, wind, pieces of

glide down the river, there is a sound of splashing.

. And to add to our gaiety there is the cry of a

x>n. Herons live on the Siberian rivers, so it

ms they don't consider the climate but the geo-

plncal position. . . . Well, an hour later, in the

kness, a huge ferry-boat of the shape of a barge

ics into sight with huge oars that look like the

cers of a crab. The ferry-men are a rowdy set,

the most part exiles banished here by the verdict

166 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

of society for their vicious life. They use insuffer-
ably bad language, shout, and ask for money for
vodka. . . . The ferrying across takes a long, long
time ... an agonizingly long time. The ferry-
boat crawls. Again the feeling of loneliness, and the
heron seems calling on purpose, as though he means
to say: "Don't be frightened, old man, I am here, the
Lintvaryovs have sent me here from the Psyol."

On the 7th of May when I asked for horses the
driver said the Irtysh had overflowed its banks and
flooded the meadows, that Kuzma had set off the day
before and had difficulty in getting back, and that I
could not go, but must wait. ... I asked: "Wait till
when?" Answer: "The Lord only knows!" That
was vague. Besides, I had taken a vow to get rid
on the journey of two of my vices which were a source
of considerable expense, trouble, and inconvenience;
I mean my readiness to give in, and be overpersuaded.
I am quick to agree, and so I have had to travel any-
how, sometimes to pay double and to wait for hours
at a time. I had taken to refusing to agree and to be-
lieve and my sides have ached less. For instance,
they bring out not a proper carriage but a common,
jolting cart. I refuse to travel in the jolting cart,
I insist, and the carriage is sure to appear, though
they may have declared that there was no such thing
in the whole village, and so on. Well, I suspected
that the Irtysh floods were invented simply to avoid
driving me by night through the mud. I pro-
tested and told them to start. The peasant who
had heard of the floods from Kuzma, and had not
himself seen them, scratched himself and consented;
the old men encouraged him, saying that when they
were young and used to drive, they were afraid of

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 167

thing. We set off. Much rain, a vicious wind,

'd . . . and felt boots on my feet. Do you know

at felt boots are like when they are soaked? They

5 like boots of jelly. We drive on and on, and be-

[d, there lies stretched before my eyes an immense

e from which the earth appears in patches here

1 there, and bushes stand out: these are the

)ded meadows. In the distance stretches the

3p bank of the Irtysh, on which there are white

;aks of snow. . . . We begin driving through

lake. We might have turned back, but obstinacy

vented me, and an incomprehensible impulse of

ance mastered me that impulse which made me

lie from the yacht in the middle of the Black Sea

has impelled me to not a few acts of folly. . . I

pose it is a special neurosis. We drive on and

:e for the little islands and strips of land. The di-

lon is indicated by bridges and planks ; they have

i washed away. To cross by them we had to un-

less the horses and lead them over one by one.

. The driver unharnesses the horses, I jump out

the water in my felt boots and hold them. . . .

easant diversion ! And the rain and wind. . . .

en of Heaven! At last we get to a little island

"e there stands a hut without a roof. . . . Wet

es are wandering about in the wet dung. A

ant with a long stick comes out of the hut and

:rtakes to guide us. He measures the depth of

rater with his stick, and tries the ground. He

is out God bless him for it ! on to a long strip

ound which he called "the ridge." He instructs

at we must keep to the right or perhaps it was

3 left, I don't remember and get on to another

. This we do. My felt boots are soaking

168 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

and squelching, my socks are snuffling. The driver
says nothing and clicks dejectedly to his horses. He
would gladly turn back, but by now it was late, it
was dark. ... At last oh, joy! we reach the
Irtysh. . . . The further bank is steep but the near
bank is sloping. The near one is hollowed out, looks
slippery, hateful, not a trace of vegetation. . . .
The turbid water splashes upon it with crests of white
foam, and dashes back again as though disgusted at
touching the uncouth slippery bank on which it
seems that none but toads and the souls of murderers
could live. . . . The Irtysh makes no loud or roar-
ing sound, but it sounds as though it were hammering
on coffins in its depths. ... A damnable impres-
sion ! The further bank is steep, dark brown, deso-
late. . . .

There is a hut; the ferry-men live in it. One of
them comes out and announces that it is impossible
to work the ferry as a storm has come up. The river,
they said, was wide, and the wind was strong. And
so I had to stay the night at the hut. ... I remem-
ber the night. The snoring of the ferry-men and my
driver, the roar of the wind, the patter of the rain,
the mutterings of the Irtysh. . . . Before going to
sleep I wrote a letter to Marya Vladimirovna; I was
reminded of the Bozharovsky pool.

In the morning they were unwilling to ferry me
across: there was a high wind. We had to row across
in the boat. I am rowed across the river, while the
rain, comes lashing down, the wind blows, my luggage
is /benched and my felt boots, which had been dried
overnight in the oven, become jelly again. Oh, the
darling leather coat ! If I did not catch cold I owe
it entirely to that. When I come back you must

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 169

reward it with an anointing of tallow or castor-oil.
On the bank I sat for a whole hour on my portman-
teau waiting for horses to come from the village. I
remember it was very slippery clambering up the
bank. In the village I warmed myself and had some
tea. Some exiles came to beg for alms. Every
family makes forty pounds of wheaten flour into
bread for them every day. It's a kind of forced
tribute.

The exiles take the bread and sell it for drink at
the tavern. One exile, a tattered, closely shaven
old man, whose eyes had been knocked out in the
tavern by his fellow-exiles, hearing that there was a
traveller in the room and taking me for a merchant,
began singing and repeating the prayers. He recited
the prayer for health and for the rest of the soul, and
sang the Easter hymn, "Let the Lord arise," and
"With thy Saints, Lord" goodness knows what
he didn't sing! Then he began telling lies, saying
that he was a Moscow merchant. I noticed how this
drunken creature despised the peasants upon whom
he was living.

On the llth I drove with posting horses. I read
the books of complaints at the posting station in my
boredom.

... On the 12th of May they would not give me
horses, saying that I could not drive, because the
River Ob had overflowed its banks and flooded all the
meadows. They advised me to turn off the track as
far as Krasny Yar; then go by boat twelve versts
to Dubrovin, and at Dubrovin you can get posting
horses. ... I drove with private horses as far as
Krasny Yar. I arrive in the morning; I am told there
is a boat, but that I must wait a little as the grand-

170 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

father had sent the workman to row the president'^
secretary to Dubrovin in it. Very well, we will wait^
. . . An hour passes, a second, a third. . .
Midday arrives, then evening. . . . Allah kerin\ 5
what a lot of tea I drank, what a lot of hread I at^
what a lot of thoughts I thought! And what a lot
I slept! Night came on and still no boat. . .
Early morning came. ... At last at nine o'clock
the workmen returned. . . . Thank heaven, we ar$
afloat at last ! And how pleasant it is ! The air is
still, the oarsmen are good, the islands are beauti,
ful. . . . The floods caught men and cattle una*
awares, and I see peasant women rowing in boats to
the islands to milk the cows. And the cows are lean
and dejected. There is absolutely no grass for them,
owing to the cold. I was rowed twelve versts. At
the station of Dubrovin I had tea, and for tea they
gave me, can you imagine! waffles. ... I suppose
the woman of the house was an exile or the wife of
an exile. At the next station an old clerk, a Pole,
to whom I gave some antipyrin for his headache,
complained of his poverty, and said Count Sapyega, a
Pole who was a gentleman-m-waiting at the Austrian
Court, and who assisted his fellow-countrymen, had
lately arrived there on his way to Siberia, "He stayed
near the station," said the clerk, "and I didn't know
it ! Holy Mother ! He would have helped me ! I
wrote to him at Vienna, but I got no answer, . . ."
and so on. Why am I not a Sapyega? I would send
this poor fellow to his own country.

On the 14th of May again they would not give me
horses. The Tom was flooded. How vexatious!
It meant not mere vexation but despair! Fifty versts
from Tomsk and how unexpected! A woman in my

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 171

place would have sobbed. Some kind-hearted peo-
ple found a solution for me. "Drive on, sir, as far as
the Tom, it is only six versts from here; there they
will row you across to Yar, and Ilya Markovitch will
take you on from there to Tomsk." I hired a horse
and drove to the Tom, to the place where the boat was
to be. I drove there was no boat. They told me it
had just set off with the post, and was hardly likely to
return as there was such a wind. I began waiting.
. . . The ground was covered with snow, it rained
and hailed and the wind blew. . . . One hour
passed, a second, and no boat. Fate was laughing at
me. I returned to the station. There the driver of
the mail with three posting horses was just setting off
for the Tom. I told him there was no boat. He
stayed^ Fate rewarded me ; the clerk in response to
my hesitating inquiry whether there was anything to
eat told me the woman of the house had some cabbage
soup. Oh, rapture! Oh, radiant day! And the
daughter of the house did in fact give me some excel-
lent cabbage soup, with some capital meat with roast
potatoes and cucumbers. I have not had such a din-
ner since I was at Pan Zalyessky's. After the pota-
toes I let myself go, and made myself some coffee.

Towards evening the mail driver, an eldeily man
who had evidently endured a good deal in his day,
and who did not venture to sit down in my presence,
began preparing to set off to the Tom. I did the
same. We drove off. As soon as we reached the
river the boat came into sight a long boat: I have
never dreamed of a boat so long. While the post was
being loaded on to the boat I witnessed a strange
phenomenon there was a peal of thunder, a queer
thing in a cold wind, with snow on the ground. They

172 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

loaded up and rowed off. My sweet Misha, forgive
me for being so rejoiced that I did not bring you with
me! How sensible it was of me not to take anyone
with me! At first our boat floated over a meadow
near willow-bushes. ... As is common before a
storm or during a storm, a violent wind suddenly
sprang up on the water and stirred up the waves.
The boatman who was sitting at the helm advised our
waiting in the willow-bushes till the storm was over.
They answered him that if the storm grew worse,
they might stay in the willow-bushes till night and
be drowned all the same. They proceeded to settle
it by majority of votes., and decided to row on. An
evil mocking fate is mine. Oh, why these jests?
We rowed on in silence, concentrating our thoughts.
... I remember the figure of the mail-driver, a
man of varied experiences. I remember the little
soldier who suddenly became as crimson as cherry
juice. I thought, if the boat upsets I will fling off my
fur coat and my leather coat . . . then my felt boots,
then . . . and so on. ... But the bank came
nearer and nearer, one's soul felt easier and easier,
one's heart throbbed with joy, one heaved deep sighs
as though one could breathe freely at last, and leapt
on the wet slippery bank. . . . Thank God T

At Ilya Markovitch's, the converted Jew's, I was
told that I could not drive at night; the road was
bad; that I must remain till next day. Very good,
I stayed. After tea I sat down to write you this
letter, interrupted by the visit of the "president."
The president is a rich mixture of Nozdryov, Hlesta-
kov and a cur. A drunkard, a rake, a liar, a singer, a
story-teller, and with all that a good-natured man.
He had brought with him a big trunk stuffed full of

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 173

isiness papers, a bedstead and mattress, a gun, and
secretary. The secretary is an excellent, well-
ucated man, a protesting liberal who has studied in
itersburg, and is free in his ideas ; I don't know how
came to Siberia, he is infected to the marrow of
s bones with every sort of disease, and is taking to
ink, thanks to his principal, who calls him Kolya.
te representative of authority sends for a coidial.
)octor," he bawls, "drink another glass, I beseech
u humbly!" Of course, I drink it. The repre-
itative of authority drinks soundly, lies ou't-
reously, uses shameless language. We go to bed.
the morning a cordial is sent for again. They
ill the cordial till ten o'clock and at last they go.
e converted Jew, Ilya Markovitch, whom the
isants here idolize so I was told gave me horses
drive to Tomsk.

The "president," the secretary and I got into the
ne conveyance. All the way the "president" told
s, drank out of the bottle, boasted that he did
t take bribes, raved about the scenery, and shook
fist at the tramps that he met. We drove fifteen
sts, then halt! The village of Brovkmo. . . .
j stop near a Jew's shop and go to take "rest and
reshment." The Jew runs to fetch us a cordial
lie his wife makes us some fish-soup, of which I
re written to you already. The "president" gave
[ers that the sotsky, the desyatsky, and the road
itractor should come to him, and in his drunken-
s began reproving them, not the least restrained
my presence. He swore like a Tatar.
[ soon parted from the "president," and on the
ning of the 15th of May by an appalling road
ched Tomsk. During the last two days I have

174 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

only done seventy versts; you can imagine what the
roads are like!

In Tomsk the mud was almost impassable. Of
the town and the manner of living here I will write
in a day or two, but good-bye for now I am tired of
writing.

There are no poplars. The Kuvshinmkov General
was lying. I have seen no nightingales. There are
magpies and cuckoos.

I received a telegram of eighty words from Suvorin
to-day.

Excuse this letter's being like a hotch-potch. It's
incoherent, but I can't help it. Sitting in an hotel
room one can't write better. Excuse its being long,
It's not my fault. My pen ran away with me be-
sides, I wanted to go on talking to you. It's three
o'clock in the night. My hand is tired. The wick
of the candle wants snuffing, I can hardly see. Write
to me at Sahalin every four or five days. It seems
that the post goes there, not only by sea but across
Siberia, so I shall get letters frequently.

All the Tomsk people tell me that there has not
been a spring so cold and rainy as this one since 1842.
Half Tomsk is under water. My luck !

I am eating sweets.

I shall have to stay at Tomsk till the rains are over.
They say the road to Irkutsk is awful.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 175

TOMSK,

May 20.

It is Trinity Sunday with you, while with us even-
be willow has not yet come out, and there is still
now on the banks of the Tom. To-morrow I am
tarting for Irkutsk. I am rested. There is no need
or hurry, as steam navigation on Lake Baikal does
iot begin till the 10th of June; but I shall go all the
ame.

I am alive and well, my money is safe; I have a
light pain in my right eye. It aches.

. . . Everyone advises me to go back across
America, as they say one may die of boredom in the
Volunteer Fleet; it's all military discipline and red
ape regulations, and they don't often touch at a
'ort.

To fill up my time I have been writing some nn-
iressions of my journey and sending them to Novoye
r remya; you will read them soon after the 10th of
une. I write a little about everything, chit-chat.

don't write for glory but from a financial point of
iew, and in consideration of the money I have had'
i advance.

Tomsk is a very dull town. To judge from the
runkards whose acquaintance I have made, and
rom the intellectual people who have come to the
otel to pay their respects to me, the inhabitants are
ery dull too.

******

In two and a half days I shall be in Krasnoyarsk,
nd in seven or eight in Irkutsk. It's fifteen hundred
ersts to Irkutsk. I have made myself coffee and am
ist going to drink it.

176 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

. . . After Tomsk the Taiga begins. We shall
see it.

My greeting to all the Lintvaryovs and to our old
Maryushka. I beg mother not to worry and not to
put faith in bad dreams. Have the radishes suc-
ceeded? There are none here at all.

Keep well, don't worry about money there will
be plenty; don't try to spend less and spoil the sum-
mer for yourselves.

To A. S. SUVORIN.

TOMSK,
May 20, 1890

Greetings to you at last from Siberia, dear Alexey
Sergeyevitch ! I have missed you and our corres-
pondence terribly.

I will begin from the beginning, however. At
Tyumen I was told the first steamer to Tomsk went
on the 18th of May. I had to do the journey with
horses. For the first three days every joint and sinew
ached, but afterwards I got used to the jolting and
felt no more aches. Only the lack of sleep, the con-
tinual worry over the luggage, the jolting and the
fasting brought on spitting of blood when I coughed,
and this depressed my spirits, which were none too
grand before. For the first few days it was bearable
but then a cold wind began to blow, the windows of
heaven were opened, the rivers flooded the meadows
and roads, I was continually having to change my
chaise for a boat. You'll read of my struggles with
the floods and the mud in the article I enclose. I did
not mention in it that my big high boots were tight,
and that I waded through the mud and the water in

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 177

iy felt boots, and that my felt boots were soaked
) jelly. The road was so abominable that during
le last two days of my journey I only did seventy
ersts.

When I set off I promised to send you notes of my
)urney after Tomsk, since the road between Tyumen
ad Tomsk has been described a thousand times
Iready. But in your telegram you have expressed
le desire to get my impressions of Siberia as quickly
3 possible, and have even had the cruelty, sir, to
Broach me with lapse of memory, as though I had
)rgotten you. It was absolutely impossible to write
n the road. I kept a brief diary in pencil and can
ffer you now only what is written in that diary. To
void writing at great length and getting mixed up,

divided all my impressions into chapters. I am
mding you six chapters. They are written for you
ersonally. I wrote for you only, and so have not
een afraid of being too subjective, and have not
een afraid of there being more of Chekhov's feelings
rid thoughts than of Siberia in them. If you find
)me lines interesting and worth printing, give them a
rentable publicity, signing them with my name and
rmtmg them in separate chapters, a tablespoonful
nee an hour. The general title can be From Siberia,
len From Trans-Baikalia, then From the Amur, and
) on.

You shall have another helping from Irkutsk, for
hich I am starting to-morrow. I shall not be less
lan ten days on the journey the road is bad. I
lall send you a few chapters again, and shall send
iem whether you intend to print them or not.

ead them and when you are tired of them telegraph
> me "Shut up!"

178 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

I have been as hungry as a dog the whole way.
I stuffed myself with bread so as not to dream of
turbot, asparagus, and suchlike. I even dreamed of
buckwheat porridge. I have dreamed of it for hours
at a time.

At Tyumen I bought some sausage for the journey,
but what sausage! When you take a bit in your
mouth there's a sniff as though you had gone into a
stable at the very moment when the coachmen were
taking off their leg-wrappers; when you begin chew-
ing it, you feel as though you had fastened your teeth
into a dog's tail defiled with pitch. Tfoo! I ate
some once or twice, and threw it away.

I have had one telegram and the letter from you
in which you write that you want to bring out an
encyclopaedic dictionary. I don't know why, but the
news of that dictionary rejoiced me greatly. Do, my
dear friend! If I am any use for working on it, I
will devote November and December to you, and will
spend those months in Petersburg. I will sit at it
from morning till night.

I made a fair copy of my notes at Tomsk in horrid
hotel surroundings, but I took trouble about it and
was not without a desire to please you. I thought,
he must be bored and hot in Feodosia, let him read
about the cold. These notes will come to you instead
of a letter which has been taking shape in my head
during the whole journey. In return you must send
to me at Sahalin all your critical reviews except the
first two, which I have read; have Peshel's "Ethnol-
ogy" sent me there too, except the first two instal-
ments, which I have already.

The post to Sahalin goes both by sea and across
Siberia, so if people write to me I shall get letters

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 179

ten. Don't lose my address Island of Sahalin,
'exandrovsky Post.

Oh, the expense ! Gewalt! Thanks to the floods,
lad to pay the drivers double and almost treble, for
has been fiendishly hard work. My trunk, a very
arming article, has turned out unsuitable for the
irney; it takes a lot of room, pokes one in the ribs,
d rattles, and worst of all threatens to burst open.
)on't take boxes on long journeys!" good people
id to me, but I remembered this advice only when
lad gone half-way. Well, I am leaving my trunk
reside permanently at Tomsk, and am buying in-
;ad of it a sort of leather carcase, which has the
vantage that it can be tied so as to form two halves
the bottom of the chaise as one likes. I paid six-
;n roubles for it. Next point. To travel to the
nur, changing one's conveyance at every station,
torture. You shatter both yourself and all your
ygage. I was advised to buy a trap. I bought one
day for one hundred and thirty roubles. If I don't
3ceed in selling it at Sryetensk, where my horse
irney ends, I shall be in a fix and shall howl aloud,
-day I dined with the editor of the Sibirsky
'estnik, a local Nozdryov, a broad nature. ... He
ink to the tune of six roubles.
Stop ! They announce that the deputy police mas-
wants to see me. What can it be?!?
My alarm was unnecessary. The police officer
*ns out to be devoted to literature and himself an
thor; he has come to pay his respects to me. He
nt home to fetch his play, and I believe intends
regale me with it. He is just coming again and
eventing me from writing to you. . . .
. . . My greetings to Nastyusha and Boris. I

180 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

should be genuinely delighted for their satisfaction
to fling myself into the jaws of a tiger and call them
to my aid, but, alas! I haven't reached the tigers
here: the only furry animals I have seen so far in
Siberia are many hares and one mouse.

Stop! The police officer has returned. He has
not read me his drama though he brought it, but re-
galed me with a story. It's not bad, only too local.
He showed me a nugget of gold. He asked for some
vodka. I don't remember a single educated Siberian
who has not asked for vodka on coming to see me.
He told me he had a mistress, a married woman ; he
gave me a petition to the Tsar about divorce to
read. . . .

x- * * *

How glad I am when I am forced to stop some-
where for the night ! I no sooner roll into bed than
I am asleep. Here, travelling and not sleeping at
night, one prizes sleep above everything. There is
no greater enjoyment in life than sleep when one
is sleepy. In Moscow, in Russia generally, I never
was sleepy as I understand the word now. I went to
bed simply because one had to. But now ! Another
observation. On a journey one has no desire for
spirits. I can't drink. I smoke a great deal.
One's mind does not work well. I cannot put my
thoughts together. Time flies rapidly, so that one
scarcely notices it, from ten o'clock in the morning to
seven o'clock in the evening. Evening comes quickly
after morning. It's just the same when one is seri-
ously ill. The wind and the rain have made my face
all scaly, and when I look in the looking-glass I don't
recognize my once noble features.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 181

I am not going to describe Tomsk. All the towns
3 alike in Russia. Tomsk is a dull and intemperate
vn. There are absolutely no good-looking women,
d the disregard for justice is Asiatic. The town is
narkable for the fact that governors die in it.
If my letters are short, careless, or dry, don't be
)ss, for one cannot always be oneself on a journey
d write as one wants to. The ink is bad, and there
always a hair or a splodge on one's pen.

To HIS SISTER.

KRASNOYARSK,
May 28, 1890.

What a deadly road! It was all we could do to
wl to Krasnoyarsk and my trap had to be repaired
ce. The first thing to be broken was the vertical
ce of iron connecting the front of the carriage with
j axle; then the so-called circle under the front
>ke. I have never in all my life seen such a road
:h impassable mud and such an utterly neglected
d. I am going to write about its horrors to the
voye Vremya, and so won't talk about it now.
The last three stations have been splendid; as one
nes down to Krasnoyarsk one seems to be getting
o a different world. You come out of the forest
3 a plain which is like our Donets steppe, but here
mountain ridges are grander. The sun shines its
y best and the birch-trees are out, though three sta-
is back the buds were not even bursting. Thank
d, I have at last reached a summer in which there is
ther rain nor a cold wind. Krasnoyarsk is a pic-
esque, cultured town ; compared with it, Tomsk is
pig in a skull-cap and the acme of mauvais ton"

182 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

The streets are clean and paved, the houses are of
stone and large, the churches are elegant.

I am alive and perfectly well. My money is all
right, and so are my things ; I lost my woollen stock-
ings but soon found them again.

Apart from my trap, everything so far has been
satisfactory and I have nothing to complain of.
Only I am spending an awful lot of money. Incom-
petence in the practical affairs of life is never felt so
much as on a journey. I pay more than I need to,
I do the wrong thing, and I say the wrong thing, and
I am always expecting what does not happen.

... I shall be in Irkutsk in five or six days, shall
spend as many days there, then drive on to Sryetensk
'and that will be the end of my journey on land.
For more than a fortnight I have been driving with-
out a break, I think about nothing else, I live for
nothing else; every morning I see the sunrise from
beginning to end. I've grown so used to it that it
seems as though all my life I had been driving and
struggling with the muddy roads. When it does not
rain, and there are no pits of mud on the road, one
feels queer and even a little bored. And how filthy
I am, what a rapscallion I look! What a state my
luckless clothes are in !

. . . For mother's information : I have still a jar
and a half of coffee ; I feed on locusts and wild honey ;
I shall dine to-day at Irkutsk. The further east one
gets the dearer everything is. Rye flour is seventy
kopecks a pood, while on the other side of Tomsk it
was twenty-five and twenty-seven kopecks per pood,
and wheaten flour thirty kopecks. The tobacco sold'
in Siberia is vile and loathsome; I tremble because
mine is nearly done.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 183

... I am travelling with two lieutenants and an
rmy doctor who are all on their way to the Amur.
o my revolver is after all quite superfluous. In
ich company hell would have no terrors. We are
ist having tea at the station, and after tea we are
Ding to have a look at the town.

I should have no objection to living in Krasno-
irsk. I can't think why this is a favourite place for
ending exiles to.

******

Your Homo Sachaliensis,

A. CHEKHOV.

To HIS BROTHER ALEXANDR.

IRKUTSK,

June 5, 1890.

MY EUROPEAN BROTHER,

It is, of course, unpleasant to live in Siberia ;
nt better to live in Siberia and feel oneself a man of
loral worth, than to live in Petersburg with the repu-
ition of a drunkard and a scoundrel. No reference

present company.

******

Siberia is a cold and long country. I drive on and
n and see no end to it. I see little that is new or of
iterest, but I feel and experience a great deal. I
ave contended with flooded rivers, with cold, with
npassable mud, hunger and sleepiness: such sen-
itions as you could not get for a million in Moscow !
ou ought to come to Siberia. Ask the authorities

exile you.

The best of all Siberian towns is Irkutsk. Tomsk

184 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

is not worth a brass farthing, and the district towns
are no better than the Kryepkaya in which you were
so heedlessly born. What is most provoking, there
is nothing to eat in the district towns, and oh dear,
how conscious one is of that on the journey! You
get to a town and feel ready to eat a mountain ; you
arrive and alack! no sausage, no cheese, no meat,
no herring even, but the same insipid eggs and milk
as in the villages.

On the whole I am satisfied with my expedition,
and don't regret having come. The travelling is
hard, but the resting after it is delightful. I rest
with enjoyment.

From Irkutsk I shall make for Baikal, which I
shall cross by steamer; it's a thousand versts from
the Baikal to the Amur, and thence I shall go by
steamer to the Pacific, where the first thing I shall do
is to have a bath and eat oysters.

I got here yesterday and went first of all to have a
bath, then to bed. Oh, how I slept! I never
understood what sleep meant till now.

* * * * #

I bless you with both hands.

Your Asiatic brother,

A. CHEKHOV.

To A. N. PLESHTCHEYEV.

IRKUTSK,

June 5, 1890.

A thousand greetings to you, dear Alexey Niko-
laevitch.

At last I have vanquished the most difficult three

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 185

msand versts; I am sitting in a decent hotel and
i write. I have rigged myself out all in new things
i, as far as possible, smart ones, for you cannot
igine how sick I was of my big muddy boots, of my
:epskin smelling of tar, of my overcoat covered with
3 of hay, of dust and crumbs in my pockets, and
my extremely dirty linen. I looked such a raga-
ffin on the journey that even the tramps eyed me
ance; and then, as ill luck would have it, the cold
ids and rain chapped my face and made it scaly
3 a fish. Now at last I am a European again, and
tn conscious of it all over.

Well, what am I to write to you? It's all so long
I so vast that one doesn't know where to begin.

my experiences in Siberia I divide into three
iods. (1) From Tyumen to Tomsk, fifteen hun-
d versts, terrible cold, day and night, sheepskin,

boots, cold rains, winds and a desperate life-
1-death struggle with the flooded rivers. The
irs had flooded the meadows and roads, and I was
stantly exchanging my trap for a boat and floating
: a Venetian on a gondola ; the boats, the waiting
the bank for them, the rowing across, etc., all that
c up so much time that during the last two days
}re reaching Tomsk, in spite of all my efforts, I
Y did seventy versts instead of four or five

dred. There were, moreover, some very uneasy

unpleasant moments, especially when the wind
j and began to buffet the boat. (2) From
isk to Krasnoyarsk, five hundred versts, impass-
i mud, my chaise and I stuck in the mud like flies
hick jam. How many times I broke my chaise
; my own property!) how many versts I walked!
bespattered my countenance and my clothes

186 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

were ! It was not driving but wading through mud.
How I swore at it all! My brain would not work, I
could do nothing but swear. I was utterly ex-
hausted, and was very glad to reach the posting
station at Krasnoyarsk. (3) From Krasnoyarsk
to Irkutsk, fifteen hundred and sixty-six versts,
heat, smoke from the burning woods, and dust
dust in one's mouth, in one's nose, in one's
pockets; when you look at yourself in the glass,
you think your face has been painted. When,
on reaching Irkutsk, I washed at the baths, the
soapsuds off my head were not white but of an
ashen brown colour, as though I were washing a horse.

When I get home I will tell you about the Yenissey
and the Taiga very interesting and curious, for it is
something quite new to a European; everything else
is ordinary and monotonous. Roughly speaking,
the scenery of Siberia is not very different from that
of European Russia ; there are differences, but they
are not very noticeable. Travelling is perfectly
safe.

Robbers and highwaymen are all nonsense and
fairy tales. A revolver is utterly unnecessary, and
you are as safe at night in the forest as you are by day
on the Nevsky Prospect. It's different for anyone
travelling on foot. . . .

To N. A. LEIKIN.

IRKUTSK,
June 5, 1890.

Greetings, dear Nikolay Alexandrovitch !

I send you heartfelt good wishes from Irkutsk,
from the depths of Siberia. I reached Irkutsk last
night and was very glad to have arrived, as I was

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 187

hausted by the journey and missed friends and

lations, to whom I had not written for ages. Well,

mt is there of interest to write to you? I will begin

telling you that the journey is extraordinarily

ig. From Tyumen to Irkutsk I have driven more

an three thousand versts. From Tyumen to

>msk I had cold and flooded rivers to contend with.

le cold was awful; on Ascension Day there was

)st and snow, so that I could not take off my sheep-

in and felt boots until I reached the hotel at

unsk. As for the floods, they were a veritable

igue of Egypt. The rivers rose above their banks

d overflowed the meadows, and with them the

ids, for dozens of versts around. I was continually

ving to exchange my chaise for a boat, and one

aid not get a boat for nothing for a good boat

e had to pay with one's heart's blood, for one had to

waiting on the bank for twenty-four hours at a

etch in the cold wind and the rain. . . . From

msk to Krasnoyarsk was a desperate struggle

-ough impassable mud. My goodness, it frightens

; to think of it! How often I had to mend my

aise, to walk, to swear, to get out of my chaise and

t into it again, and so on ! It sometimes happened

it I was from six to ten hours getting from one

ition to another, and every time the chaise had to be

mded it took from ten to fifteen hours. From Kras-

yarsk to Irkutsk was fearfully hot and dusty. Add

all that hunger, dust in one's nose, one's eyes

led together with sleep, the continual dread that

nething would get broken in the chaise (it is my

n), and boredom. . . . Nevertheless I am well

itent, and I thank God that He has given me the

ength and opportunity to make this journey. I have

188 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

seen and experienced a great deal, and it has all been
very new and interesting to me not as a literary man,
but as a human being. The Yenissey, the Taiga, the
stations, the drivers, the wild scenery, the wild life,
the physical agonies caused by the discomforts of
the journey, the enjoyment I got from rest all taken
together is so delightful that I can't describe it. The
mere fact that I have been for more than a month in
the open air is interesting and healthy; every day for
a month I have seen the sunrise. . . .

To HIS SISTER.

IRKUTSK,

June 6, 1890.

Greetings to you, dear mother, Ivan, Masha and
Misha, and all of you !

In my last long letter I wrote to you that the
mountains near Krasnoyarsk are like the Donets
Ridge, but that's not true; when I looked at them
from the street I saw they were like high walls
suriounding the city, and I was vividly reminded of
the Caucasus. And when towards evening I left the
town and was crossing the Yenissey, I saw on the
other bank mountains that were exactly like the
Caucasus, as misty and dreamy. The Yenissey is a
broad, swift, winding river, beautiful, finer than the
Volga. And the ferry across it is wonderful, in-
geniously constructed, moving against the current;
I will tell you when I am home about the construction
of it. And so the mountains and the Yenissey are the
first things original and new that I have met in
Siberia. The mountains and the Yenissey have given
me sensations which have made up to me a hundred-

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 189

Id for all the trials and troubles of the journey, and

hich have made me call Levitan a fool for being so

upid as not to come with me.

The Taiga stretches unbroken from Krasnoyarsk

Irkutsk. The trees are not bigger than in Sokol-

ki, but not one driver knows how far it goes. There

no end to be seen to it. It stretches for hundreds

versts. No one knows who or what is in the Taiga,

id it only happens in winter that people come

rough the Taiga from the far north with reindeer

r bread. When you get to the top of a mountain.

id look down, you see a mountain before you, then

lOther, mountains at the sides too and all thickly

vered with forest. It makes one feel almost

ghtened. That's the second thing original and

w.

From Krasnoyarsk it began to be hot and dusty.

le heat was terrible. My sheepskin and cap lie

ned away. The dust is in my mouth, in my nose,

wn my neck tfoo ! We weie approaching Irkutsk

-we had to cross the Angara by ferry. As though

mock us a high wind sprang up. My military

tnpanions and I, after dreaming for ten days of a

th, dinner, and sleep, stood on the bank and turned

le at the thought that we should have to spend the

*ht not at Irkutsk, but in the village. The ferry

ild not succeed in reaching the bank. We stood

hour, a second, and oh Heavens! the ferry

ide an effort and reached the bank. Bravo, we

ill have a bath, we shall have supper and sleep!

, how sweet to steam oneself, to eat, to sleep !

Irkutsk is a fine town. Quite a cultured town.

ere is a theatre, a museum, a town garden with a

id, a good hotel. ... No hideous fences, no ab~

190 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

surd shop-signs, and no waste places with warming
placards. There is a tavern called "Taganrog ;
sugar costs twenty-four kopecks a pound, pine kernels
six kopecks a pound.

******

I am quite well. My money is safe. I am saving
up my coffee for Sahahn. I have splendid tea here,
after which I am aware of an agreeable excitement.
I see Chinamen. They are a good-natured and in-
telligent people. At the Siberian bank they gave me
money at once, received me cordially, regaled me with
cigarettes, and invited me to their summer villa.
There is a magnificent confectioner's but everything
is fiendishly dear. The pavements are of wood.

Last night I drove with the officers about the town.
We heard someone cry "help" six times. It must
have been someone being murdered. We went to
look, but could not find anyone.

The cabs in Irkutsk have springs. It is a better
town than Ekaterinburg or Tomsk. Quite Euro-
pean.

Have a Mass celebrated on June 17th,* and keep
the 29th f as festively as you can; I shall be with you
in thought and you must drink my health.

******

Everything I have is crumpled, dirty, torn! I
look like a pickpocket.

I shall not bring you any furs most likely. I do not
know where they are sold, and I am too lazy to ask.

One must take at least two big pillows for a journey
and dark pillow cases are essential.

* The anniversary of the death of his brother Nikolay.
f His father's name-day.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 191

What is Ivan doing? Where has he been? Has
been to the south? I am going from Irkutsk to
ikal. My companions are preparing for sea-sick-
ss.

My big boots have grown looser with wearing, and
n't hurt my heels now.

I have ordered buckwheat porridge for to-morrow.
L the journey here I thought of curds and began
ving them with milk at the stations.
Did you get my postcards from the little towns?
i ep them: I shall be able to judge from them how
ig the post takes. The post here is in no hurry.

IRKUTSK,

June 7, 1890.

. . . The steamer from Sryetensk leaves on June
th. Good Christians, what am I to do till the
th? How am I to dispose of myself? The
irney to Sryetensk will only take five or six days,
ave greatly altered the route of my journey. From
barovsk (look at the map*) I am going not to
kolaevsk, but by the Ussuri to Vladivostok, and
m there to Sahalm. I must have a look at the
suri region. At Vladivostok I shall bathe in the
and eat oysters.

It was cold till I reached Kansk; from Kansk (see
p) I began to go down to the south. Everything
is green as with you, even the oaks are out. The
ches here are darker than in Russia, the green is
\ so sentimental. There are masses of the Russian
ite service-tree, which here takes the place of both
1 lilac and the cherry. They say they make an

Chekhov's family had, during his absence, a map of Siberia
the wall by means of which they followed his progress.

192 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

excellent jam from the service-tree. I tasted some of
the fruit pickled ; it was not bad.

Two lieutenants and an army doctor are travelling
with me. They have received their travelling ex-
penses three times over, but have spent all the money,
though they are travelling in one carriage. They
are sitting without a farthing, waiting for the pay de-
partment to send them some money. They are nice
fellows. They have had from fifteen hundred to
two thousand roubles each for travelling expenses,
and the jomney will cost them next to nothing (ex-
cluding, of course, the cost of the stopping places).
They do nothing but pitch into everybody at hotels
and stations so that people are positively afraid to
present their bills. In their company I pay less than
usual. . . . To-day for the first time in my life I
saw a Siberian cat. It has long soft fur, and a gentle
disposition.

... I felt homesick and sent you a telegram to-
day asking you to subscribe together and send me a
long telegram. It would be nothing to all of you, in-
habitants of Luka, to fling away five roubles.

. . . With whom is Mishka in love? To what
happy woman is Ivanenko telling stories of his
uncle? ... I must be in love with Jamais as I
dreamed of her yesterday. In comparison with all
the "jeunes Siberiennes" with their Yakut-Buriat
physiognomies, who do not know how to dress, to
sing, and to laugh, our Jamais, Drishka, and Gund-
assiha are simply queens. The Siberian girls and
women are like frozen fish; one would have to be a
walrus or a seal to get up a flirtation with them.

I am tired of my companions. It is much nicer
travelling alone. I like silence better than anything

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 193

L the journey and my companions talk and sing
thout stopping, and they talk of nothing but
)men. They borrowed a hundred and thirty-six
ubles from me till to-morrow and have already
ent it. They are regular sieves.

. . . The stations are sometimes thirty to thirty-
r e versts apart. You drive by night, you drive and
ive, till you feel silly and light-headed, and if you
nture to ask the driver how far it is to the next
ition, he will never say less than seventeen versts.
lat's particularly agonizing when you have to go at
walking pace along a muddy road full of holes, and
len you are thirsty. I have learned to do without
3ep; I don't mind a bit when they wake me. As
rule one does not sleep for one day and night, and
en the next day at dinner-time there is a strained
eling in one's eyelids; in the evening and in the
ght towards daybreak of the third day, one dozes

the chaise and sometimes falls asleep for a minute

one sits ; at dinner and after dinner at the stations,
lile the horses are being harnessed, one lolls on the
fa, and the real torture only begins at night. In
e evening, after drinking five glasses of tea, one's
ce begins to burn, one's body feels limp all over and
ngs to bend backwards ; one's eyes close, one's feet
he in one's big boots, one's brain is in a tangle. If
illow myself to put up for the night I fall into a dead
sep at once; if I have strength of will to go on, I
op asleep in the chaise, however violent the jolting
ay be; at the stations the drivers wake one up, as one
is to get out of the chaise and pay for the journey.
bey wake one not so much by shouting and tugging

one's sleeve, as by the stink of garlic that issues
om their lips; they smell of garlic and onion till

194 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

they make me sick. I only learned to sleep in the
chaise after Krasnoyarsk. On the way to Iikutsk I
slept for fifty-eight versts, and was only once woken
up. But the sleep one gets as one drives makes one
feel no better. It's not real sleep, but a sort of un-
conscious condition, after which one's head is mud-
dled and there's a bad taste in one's mouth.

Chinamen aie like those decrepit old gentlemen
dear Nikolay* used to like drawing. Some of them
have splendid pigtails.

The police came to see me at Tomsk. Towards
eleven o'clock the waiter suddenly announced to me
that the assistant police-master wanted to see me.
What was this for? Could it be politics? Could
they suspect me of being a Voltairian? I said to the
waiter, "Ask him in." A gentleman with long
moustaches walks in and introduces himself. It ap-
pears he is- devoted to literature, writes himself, and
has come to me in my hotel room as though to
Mahomed at Mecca to worship. I'll tell you why
I thought of him. Late in the autumn he is going to
Petersburg, and I have foisted my trunk upon him
and asked him to leave it at the Novoye Vremya office.
You might keep that in mind in case any one of us
or our friends goes to Petersburg.

You might, by the way, look out for a place in the
country. When I get back to Russia I shall take
five years' rest that is, stay in one place and twiddle
my thumbs. A place in the country will come in
very handy. I think the money will be found, for
things don't look bad. If I work off the money I
have had in advance (half of it is worked off already)
I shall certainly borrow two or three thousand in the

* Chekhov's brother.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 195

spring, to be paid off over a period of five years.
That will not be against my conscience, as I have
already let the publishing department of the Novoye
Vremya make two or three thousand out of my books,
and I shall let them make more.

I think I shall not begin on any serious work till I
am five and thirty. ... I want to try personal
life, of which I have had some before, but have not
noticed it owing to various circumstances.

To-day I rubbed my leather coat with grease. It's
a splendid coat. It has saved me from catching
cold. My sheepskin is a capital thing, too: it serves
me as a coat and a mattress, both. One is as warm
in it as on a stove. It's wretched without pillows.
Hay does not take the place of them, and with the
continual friction there's a lot of dust from it which
tickles one's face and prevents one from dozing. I
haven't a single sheet. That's horrid too. And I
ought to have taken some more trousers. The more
luggage one has the better there's less jolting and
more comfort.

Good-bye, though. I have got nothing more to
write about. My greetings to all.

STATION LISTVENITCHNAYA,
ON LAKE BAIKAL,

June 13.

I am having an idiotic time. On the evening of
the llth of June, the day before yesterday, we set
off from Irkutsk, in the fond hope of catching the
Baikal steamer, which leaves at four o'clock in the
morning. From Irkutsk to Baikal there are only
three stations. At the first station they informed us
that all the horses were exhausted and that it was

196 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

therefore impossible to go. We had to put up for
the night. Yesterday morning we set off from that
station, and by midday we reached Baikal. We went
to the harbour, and in answer to our inquiries were
told that the steamer did not go till Friday the
fifteenth. This meant that we should have to sit on
the bank and look at the water and wait. As there
is nothing that does not end in time, I have no ob-
jection to waiting, and always wait patiently; but the
point is the steamer leaves Sryetensk on the 20th
and sails down the Amur: if we don't catch it we
must wait for the next steamer, which does not go till
the 30th. Merciful Heavens, when shall I get to
Sahalin !

We drove to Baikal along the bank of the An-
gara, which rises out of Lake Baikal and flows into
the Yenissey. Look at the map. The banks are
picturesque. Mountains and mountains, and dense
forests on the mountains. The weather was exquisite
still, sunny and warm; as I drove I felt I was excep-
tionally well; I felt so happy that I cannot describe
it. It was perhaps the contrast after the stay at
Irkutsk, and because the scenery on the Angara is
like Switzerland. It is something new and original.
We drove along the river bank, came to the mouth of
the river, and turned to the left; then we came upon
the bank of Lake Baikal, which in Siberia is called the
sea. It is like a mirror. The other side, of course,
is out of sight; it is ninety versts away. The banks
are high, steep, stony, and covered with forest, to
right and to left there are promontories which jut
into the sea like Au-dag or the Tohtebel at Feodosia.
It's like the Crimea. The station of Listvenitchnaya
lies at the water's edge, and is strikingly like Yalta:

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 197

if the houses were white it would be exactly like
Yalta. Only there are no buildings on the moun-
tains, as they are too overhanging and it is impossible
to build on them.

We have taken a little barn of a lodging that re-
minds one of any of the Kraskovsky summer villas.
Just outside the window, two or three yards from
the wall, is Lake Baikal. We pay a rouble a day.
The mountains, the forests, the mirror-like Baikal are
all poisoned for me by the thought that we shall have
to stay here till the fifteenth. What are we to do
here? What is more, we don't know what there is
for us to eat. The inhabitants feed upon nothing
but garlic. There is neither meat nor fish. They
have given us no milk, but have promised it. For a
little white loaf they demanded sixteen kopecks. I
bought some buckwheat and a piece of smoked pork,
and asked them to make a thin porridge of it: it was
not nice, but there was nothing to be done, I had to
eat it. All the evening we hunted about the village
to find someone who would sell us a hen, and found
no one. . . . But there is vodka. The Russian is a
great pig. If you ask him why he doesn't eat meat
and fish he justifies himself by the absence of trans-
port, ways and communications, and so on, and yet
vodka is to be found in the remotest villages and as
much of it as you please. And yet one would have
supposed that it would have been much easier to
obtain meat and fish than vodka, which is more ex-
pensive and more difficult to transport. . . . Yes,
drinking vodka must be much more interesting than
fishing in Lake Baikal or rearing cattle.

At midnight a little steamer arrived; we went to
look at it, and seized the opportunity to ask if there

198 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

was anything to eat. We were told that to-morrow
we should be able to get dinner, but that now it was
late, the kitchen fire was out, and so on. We thanked
them for "to-morrow" it was something to look for-
ward to anyway! But alas! the captain came in and
told us that at four o'clock in the morning the steamer
was setting off for Kultuk. We thanked him. In
the refreshment bar, where there was not room to turn
round, we drank a bottle of sour beer (thirty-five
kopecks) , and saw on a plate some amber beads it
was salmon caviare. We returned home, and to
sleep. I am sick of sleeping. Every day one has to
put down one's sheepskin with the wool upwards,
under one's head one puts a folded greatcoat and a
pillow, and one sleeps on this heap in one's waistcoat
and trousers. . . . Civilization, where art thou ?

To-day there is rain and Lake Baikal is plunged
in mist. "Interesting," Semaskho would say. It's
dull. One ought to sit down and write, but one can
never work in bad weather. One has a foreboding of
merciless boredom; if I were alone I should not mind
but there are two lieutenants and an army doctor
with me, who are fond of talking and arguing. They
don't understand much but they talk about every-
thing. One of the lieutenants, moreover, is a bit of
a Hlestakov and a braggart. When one is travelling
one absolutely must be alone. To sit in a chaise or
in a room alone with one's thoughts is much more

interesting than being with people.

******

Congratulate me: I sold my own carriage at Irkutsk.
How much I gained on it I won't say, or mother would
fall into a faint and not sleep for five nights.

Your Homo Sachaliensis,
A. CHEKHOV.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 199

To HIS MOTHER.

STEAMER "YERMAK,"

June 20, 1890.

etmg, dear ones at home!
last I can take off my heavy muddy boots, my
f breeches, and my blue shirt which is shiny
lust and sweat; I can wash and dress like a
i being. I am not sitting in a chaise but in
-class cabin of the steamer Yermak. This
3 took place ten days ago, and this is how it
led. I wrote to you from Listvemtchnaya that
late for the Baikal steamer, that I had to cross
Baikal on Friday instead of Tuesday, and that
to this I should only be able to catch the Amur
;r on the 30th. But fate is capricious, and
}lays us tricks we do not expect. On Thurs-
Drning 'I went out for a walk on the shores of
Baikal; behold the funnel of one of the lit-
imers is smoking. I inquire where the steamer
ng. They tell me, "Across the sea" to
ro ; some merchant had hired it to take his wag-
>f goods across the Lake. We, too, wanted
s "the sea" and to go to Boyarskaya station,
re how many versts from Klyuevo to Boyars-

They tell me twenty-seven. I run back to my
lions and beg them to take the risk of going
uevo. I say the "risk" because, going to
r o where there is nothing but a harbour and a
lan's hut, we ran the risk of not finding horses,

to stay on at Klyuevo, and being late for
s steamer, which for us would be worse than
leath, as we should have to wait till Tuesday,
mpanions consented. We gathered together

200 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

our belongings, with cheerful legs stepped on to the
steamer and straight to the refreshment bar: soup,
for the love of God ! Half my kingdom for a plate
of soup! The refreshment bar was very nasty and
cramped; but the cook, Grigory Ivanitch, who had
been a house-serf at Voronezh, turned out to be at the
tip-top of his profession. He fed us magnificently.
The weather was still and sunny. The water of
Lake Baikal is the colour of turquoise, more trans-
parent than the Black Sea. They say that in deep
places you can see the bottom over a verst below;
and I myself have seen to such a depth, with rocks
and mountains plunged in the turquoise-blue, that
it sent a shiver all over me. Our journey over
Lake Baikal was wonderful. I shall never forget it
as long as I live. But I will tell you what was not
nice. We travelled third class, and the whole deck
was occupied by the waggon-horses, which were wild
as mad things. These horses gave a special character
to our crossing: it seemed as though we were in a
brigand's steamer. At Klyuevo the watchman under-
took to convey our luggage to the station; he drove
the cart while we walked along the very picturesque
shore. Levitan was an ass not to come with me.
The way was through woods : on the right, woods run-
ning uphill; on the left, woods running down to the
Lake. Such ravines, such crags ! The colouring of
Lake Baikal is soft and warm. It was, by the way,
very warm. After walking eight versts we reached
the station of Myskan, where a Kyahtan official, who
was also on his travels, regaled us with excellent tea,
and where we got the horses for Boyarskaya; and so
we set off on Thursday instead of Friday; what is
more, we got twenty-four hours m advance of the post,

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 201

which usually takes all the horses at the station. We
began driving as fast as we could, cherishing a faint
hope of reaching Sryetensk by the 20th. I will tell
you when we meet about my journey along the bank of
the Selenga and across Transbaikalia. Now I will
only say that Selenga is one continuous loneliness, and
in Transbaikalia I found everything I wanted: the
Caucasus, and the valley of the Psyol, and the Zveni-
gorod district, and the Don. By day you gallop
through the Caucasus, at night along the steppe of the
Don; in the morning, rousing yourself from slumber,
behold the province of Poltava and so for the whole
thousand versts. Verhneudmsk is a nice little town.
Tchita is a wretched place, in the style of Sumy. I
need hardly say that we had no time to think of
sleep or dinner. One gallops on thinking of nothing
but the chance that at the next station we might not
get horses, and might be kept five or six hours. We
did two hundred versts in twenty-four hours one
can't do more than that in the summer. We were
stupefied. The heat was fearful by day, while at
night it was so cold that I had to put on my leather
coat over my cloth one. One night I even wore my
sheepskin. Well, we drove on and on, and reached
Sryetensk this morning just an hour before the
steamer left, giving the drivers from the last two sta-
tions a rouble each for themselves.

And so my horse-journey is over. It has lasted
two months (I set out on the 21st of April) . If we
exclude the time spent on the railway and the steamer,
the three days spent in Ekaterinburg, the week in
Tomsk, the day in Krasnoyarsk, the week in Irkutsk,
the two days on the shores of Lake Baikal, and the
days wasted in waiting for boats to cross the floods,

202 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

you can judge of the rate at which I have driven.
My journey has been most successful, I wish nothing
better for anyone. I have not once been ill, and of
the mass of things I had with me I have lost nothing
but a penknife, the strap off my trunk, and a little
jar of carbolic ointment. My money is safe. It is
not often that anyone succeeds in travelling a thou-
sand versts so well.

I have grown so used to driving that now I don't
feel like myself, and cannot believe that I am not in
a chaise and that I don't hear the rattling and the
jingling of the bells. It seems strange that when I
go to bed I can stretch out my legs full length, and
that my face is not covered with dust. But what is
stranger still is that the bottle of brandy Kuvshinni-
kov gave me has not been broken, and that the
brandy is still in it, every drop of it. I have vowed
not to uncork it except on the shore of the Pacific.

I am sailing down the Shilka, which runs into the
Amur at the Pokrovskaya Stanitsa. The river is not
broader than the Psyol, it is even narrower. The
shores are stony: there are crags and forests. It is
absolutely wild. . . . We tack about to avoid
foundering on a sandbank, or running our helm into
the banks: steamers and barges often do so in the
rapids. It's stifling. We have just stopped at Ust-
Kara, where we have landed five or six convicts.
There are mines here and a convict prison.

Yesterday we were at Nertchinsk. The little town
is nothing to boast of, but one could live there.

And how are you, messieurs and mesdames? I
know positively nothing about you. You might sub-
scribe twopence each and send me a full telegram.

The steamer will stay the night at Gorbitsa. The

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 203

hts here are foggy, sailing is dangerous. I shall
d off this letter at Gorbitsa.
. . I am going first class because my companions
in the second. I have got away from them. We
e driven together (three in one chaise), we have
)t together and are sick of each other, especially

them.
* * * * * *

Ay handwriting is very bad, shaky. That is be-
se the steamer rocks. It's difficult to write,
broke off here. I went to my lieutenants and had

They have both had a long sleep and were in
3ry cordial mood. One of them, Lieutenant N.
3 surname jars upon my ear), is in the infantry;
s a tall, well-fed, loud-voiced Courlander, a great
rgart and Hlestakov, who sings songs from every
ra, but has no more ear than a smoked herring,
mlucky fellow who has squandered all the money
his travelling expenses, knows all Mickiewicz by
-t, is ill-bred, far too unreserved, and babbles till
Lakes you sick. Like me, he is fond of talking
it his uncles and aunts. The other lieutenant,
a geographer, is a quiet, modest, thoroughly well-
:ated fellow. If it were not for N., I could travel

the other for a million versts without being
id. But with N., who intrudes into every con-
ation, the other bores me too. ... I believe
ire reaching Gorbitsa.

b-morrow I will make up the form of a telegram
:h you must send me to Sahalin. I will try to
all I want to know in thirty words, and you must
md keep strictly to the pattern,
he gad-flies bite.

204 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

To N. A. LEIKIN.

GORBITSA,
June 20, 1890.

Greetings, dear Nikolay Alexandrovitch !

I wrote you this as I approached Gorbitsa, one of
the Cossack settlements on the banks of the Shilka,
a tributary of the Amur. This is where I have got to.
I am sailing down the Amur.

I sent you a letter from Irkutsk. Did you get it?
Since then more than a week has passed, in the course
of which I have crossed Lake Baikal and driven
through Transbaikalia. Lake Baikal is wonderful,
and the Siberians may well call it a sea instead of
a lake. The water is extraordinarily transparent, so
that one can see through it as through air; the colour
is a soft turquoise very agreeable to the eye. The
banks are mountainous, and covered with forests; it
is all impenetrable wildness without a break any-
where.

There are great numbers of bears, wild goats, and
wild creatures of all sorts, who spend their time living
in the Taiga and eating one another. I spent two
days and nights on the shore of Lake Baikal.

It was still and hot when I was sailing.

Transbaikalia is splendid. It is a mixture of
Switzerland, the Don, and Finland,

I have driven with horses more than four thousand
versts. My journey was entirely successful. I was
in good health all the time, and lost nothing of my
luggage but a penknife. I can wish no one a better
journey. The journey is absolutely free from danger,
and all the tales of escaped convicts, of night attacks,
and so on are nothing but legends, traditions of the

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 205

remote past. A revolver is an entirely superfluous
article. Now I am sitting in a first-class cabin, and
feel as though I were in Europe. I feel in the mood
one is in after passing an examination.
A whistle! that's Gorbitsa.

* * * *

The banks of the Shilka are picturesque like stage
scenes but, alas ! there is something oppressive m this
complete absence of human beings. It is like a cage
without a bird.

To HIS SISTER.

June 21, 1890 6 o'clock in the evening, not far
from the Stamtsa PoLrovskaya.

We ran upon a rock, stove a hole in the steamer,
and are now undergoing repairs. We are aground on
a sandbank and pumping out water. On the left is
the Russian bank, on the right the Chinese. If I
were back at home now I should have the right to
boast: "Though I have not been in China I have
seen China only twenty feet off." We are to stay the
night in Pokrovskaya. We shall make up a party to
see the place.

If I were a millionaire I should certainly have a
steamer of my own on the Amur. It is a fine, in-
teresting country. I advise Yegor Mihailovitch not
to go to Tuapse but here ; there are here by the way
neither tarantulas nor phalangas. On the Chinese
side there is a sentry post a small hut; sacks of
flour are piled up on the bank, ragged Chinamen are
dragging the sacks on barrows to the hut. And be-
yond is the dense, endless forest.

206 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

Some schoolgirls are travelling with us from Ir-
kutsk Russian faces, but not good-looking.

POKROVSKAYA STATSITSA,

June 23, 1890.

I have told you already we are aground on a sand-
bank. At Ust-Stryelka, where the Shilka joins the
Argun (see map), the steamer went aground in two
and a half feet of water, struck a rock, and stove in
several holes in its side and, the hold filling with
water, the steamer sank to the bottom. They began
pumping out water and putting on patches ; a naked
sailor crawled into the hold, stood up to his neck in
water, and tried the holes with his heels. Each hole
was covered on the inside with cloth smeared with
grease: they lay a board on the top, and stuck a
support upon the latter which pressed against the
ceiling like a column. Such is the repairing. They
were pumping from five o'clock in the evening till
night, but still the water did not abate: they had to
put off the work till morning. In the morning they
discovered some more holes, and began patching and
pumping again. The sailors pump while we, the
general public, pace up and clown the decks, criticize,
eat, drink, and sleep; the captain and his mate do
the same as the general public, and seem in no hurry.
On the right is the Chinese bank, on the left is the
stanitsa, Pokrovskaya, with the Cossacks of the
Amur ; if one likes one can stay in Russia, if one likes
one can go into China, there is nothing to hinder one.
It is insufferably hot in the daytime, so that one has to
put on a silk shirt. They give us dinner at twelve
o'clock, supper at seven.

Unluckily the steamer Vyestnik coming the other

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 207

way with a crowd of passengers is approaching the
stanitsa. The Vyestnik cannot go on either, and
both steamers stay stock-still. There is a military
band on the Vyestnik, consequently there has been
a regular festival. All yesterday the band was play-
ing on deck to the entertainment of the captain and
sailors, and consequently to the delay of the repair-
ing. The feminine half of the public were highly
delighted; a band, officers, naval men ... oh!
The schoolgirls were particularly pleased. Yester-
day evening we walked about the Cossack settlement,
where the same band, hired by the Cossacks, was
playing. To-day we are continuing the repairs.
The captain promises that we shall start after din-
ner, but he promises it listlessly, gazing away into
space obviously he does not mean it. We are in
no haste. When I asked a passenger, "Whenever
are we going on?" he asked, "Why, aren't you all
right here!"

And that's true. Why not stay, as long as we are
not bored?

The captain, his mate, and his agent are the acme
of politeness. The Chinese in the third class are
good-natured and funny. Yesterday a Chinaman
sat on the deck and sang something very mournful in
a falsetto voice; as he did so his profile was funnier
than any caricature. Everybody looked at him and
laughed, while he took not the slightest notice. He
sang falsetto and then began singing tenor. My God,
what a voice! It was like the bleat of a sheep or a
calf. The Chinese remind me of good-natured tame
animals, their pigtails are long and black like Natalya
Mihailovna's. Apropos of tame animals, there's a
tame fox cub living in the toilet-room. It sits and

208 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

looks on as one washes. If it sees no one for a long
time it begins to whine.

What strange conversations one hears! They
talk of nothing but gold, the mines, the Volunteer
Fleet and Japan. In Pokrovskaya all the peasants
and even the priests mine for gold. The exiles fol-
low the same occupation and grow rich as quickly as
they grow poor. There are people who look like
artizans and who never drink anything but cham-
pagne, and walk to the tavern on red baize which is
laid down from their hut to the tavern.

* * * *

The Amur country is exceedingly interesting.
Highly original. The life here is such as people have
no conception of in Europe. It reminds me of Amer-
ican stories. The shores of the Amur are so wild,
original, and luxuriant that one longs to live there all
one's life. I am writing these last few lines on the
25th of June. The steamer rocks and prevents my
writing properly. We are moving again. I have
come a thousand versts down the Amur already, and
liave seen a million gorgeous landscapes ; I feel giddy
with ecstasy. . . . It's marvellous scenery, and
now hot! What warm nights! There is a mist in
the mornings but it is warm.

I look through an opera-glass at the shore and see
a prodigious number of ducks, geese, grebes, herons
and all sorts of creatures with long beaks. This
would be the place to take a summer villa in! At
a little place called Reinov a goldminer asked me to
see his sick wife. As I was leaving him he thrust
into my hands a roll of notes. I felt ashamed. I
was beginning to refuse and thrust it back, saying

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 209

it I was very rich myself; we talked together for a
ig time trying to persuade each other, and yet in the
1 fifteen roubles remained in my hands. Yester-
T a goldminer with the face of Petya Polevaev
ed m my cabin; at dinner he diank champagne
tead of water, and treated us to it.
The villages here are like those on the Don. There
i difference in the buildings but nothing to speak
The inhabitants don't keep the fasts, and eat
it even in Holy Week; the girls smoke cigarettes,
[ old women smoke pipes it is the correct thing,
strange to see peasants with cigarettes! And
it liberalism ! Oh, what liberalism !
The air on the steamer is positively red-hot with
talk that goes on. People are not afraid to talk
id here. There's no one to airest them and no-
ire to exile them to, so you can be as liberal as you
The people for the most part are independent,
-reliant, and logical. If there is any misunder-
iding at Ust-Kara, where the convicts work
long them many politicals who don't work) , all the
ur region is in revolt. It is not the thing to tell
s. An escaped convict can travel freely on the
mer to the ocean, without any fear of the captain's
ng him up. This is partly due to the absolute
fference to everything that is done in Russia.
rybody says: "What is it to do with me?"
forgot to tell you that in Transbaikalia the driv-
are not Russians but Buriats. A funny people!
ir horses are regular vipers; they could never
harnessed without trouble more furious than
brigade horses. While the trace-horse is being
lessed, its legs are hobbled; as soon as they are set
the chaise goes flying to the devil, so that one

210 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

holds one's breath. If one does not hobble a horse
while it is being harnessed, it kicks, knocks bits out of
the shaft with its hoofs, tears the harness, and behaves
like a young devil that has been caught by the horns.

June 26.

We are getting near Blagoveshtchensk. Be well
and merry, and don't get used to being without me.
No doubt you have already? Respectful greetings
to all, and a friendly kiss.

I am perfectly well.

To A. S. SUVORIN.

BLAGOVESHTCHENSK,

June 27, 1890.

The Amur is a very fine river; I have gained more
from it than I could have expected, and I have been
wishing for a long time to share my transports with
you, but the rascally steamer has been rocking all
the seven days I have been on it, and prevents me
writing properly. Moreover, I am quite incapable
of describing anything so beautiful as the shores of
the Amur; I am at a complete loss before them, and
recognise my bankruptcy. How is one to describe
them? . . . Rocks, crags, forests, thousands of
ducks, herons and all sorts of beaked gentry, and
absolute wilderness. On the left the Russian shore,
on ^the right the Chinese. I can look at Russia or
China as I please. China is as deserted and wild as
Russia: villages and sentinels' huts are rare. Every-
thing in my head is muddled; and no wonder, your
Excellency! I have come more than a thousand

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 211

versts down the Amur and seen a million landscapes,
and you know before the Amur there was Lake
Baikal, Transbaikalia. . . . Truly I have seen
such riches and had so much enjoyment that death
would have no terrors now. The people on the Amur
are original, their life is interesting, unlike ours.
They talk of gold, gold, gold, and nothing else. I am
in a stupid state, I feel no inclination to write, and
I write shortly, piggishly; to-day I sent you four
papers about Yenissey and the Taiga, later on I will
send you something about Lake Baikal, Trans-
baikalia, and the Amur. Don't throw away these
sheets ; I will collect them, and they will serve as notes
from which I can tell you what I don't know how to
put on paper.

To-day I changed into the steamer Muravyov,
which they say does not rock; maybe I shall write.

I am in love with the Amur; 1 should be glad to
spend a couple of years on it. There is beauty,
space, freedom and warmth. Switzerland and France
have never known such freedom. The lowest con-
vict breathes more freely on the Amur than the high-
est general in Russia. If you lived here, you would
write a great deal of good stuff and delight the public,
but I am not equal to it.

One begins to meet Chinamen at Irkutsk, and here
they are common as flies. They are the most good-
natured people. If Nastya and Borya made the ac-
quaintance of the Chinese, they would leave donkeys
alone, and transfer their affection to the Chinese.
They are charming tame animals.

. . , When I invited a Chinaman to the refresh-
ment bar to treat him to vodka, before diinking it he
held out the glass to me, the bar-keeper, the waiters,

212 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

and said: "Taste." That's the Chinese ceremonial.
He did not drink it off as we do, but drank it in sips,
eating something between each sip, and then, to
express his gratitude, gave me several Chinese
coins. An awfully polite people. They are dressed
pooily, but beautifully; they eat daintily, with cere-
mony

To HIS SISTER.

THE STEAMER "MURAVYOV,"
June 29, 1890

Meteors are flying in my cabin these are luminous
beetles that look like electric spaiks. Wild goats
swim across the Amur in the day-time. The flies
here are huge. I am sharing my cabin with a China-
man Son-Luli who is constantly telling me how
in China for the merest trifle it is "off with his head."
Last night he got drunk with opium, and was talking
in his sleep all night and preventing me from sleep-
ing. On the 27th I walked about the Chinese town
Aigun. Little by little I seem gradually to be step-
ping into a fantastic world. The steamer rocks, it is
hard to write.

To-morrow I shall reach Habarovsk. The China-
man began to sing from music written on his fan.

TELEGRAM TO HIS MOTHER.

SAHALIN,

July 11, 1890.

Arrived well, telegraph Sahalin. CHEKHOV.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 213

TELEGRAM TO HIS MOTHER.

SAHALIN,
September 27, 1890.

Well. Shall arrive shortly. CHEKHOV.

To A. S. SUVORIN.

THE STEAMER "BAIKAL,"
September 11, 1890

Greetings! I am sailing on the Gulf of Tartary
from the north of Sahalin to the south. I am writing
and don't know when this letter will reach you. I
am well, though I see on all sides glaring at me the
green eyes of cholera which has laid a trap for me.
In Vladivostok, in Japan, in Shanghai, Tchifu, Suez,
and even in the moon, I fancy everywhere there
is cholera, everywhere quarantine and terror. . . .
They expect the cholera in Sahalin and keep all ves-
sels in quarantine. In short, it is a bad lookout.
Europeans are dying at Vladivostok, among others
the wife of a general has died.

I have spent just two months in the north of Saha-
lin. I was received by the local administration very
amicably, though Galkin had not written a single
word about me. Neither Galkin nor the Baroness
V., nor any of the other genii I was so foolish as to
appeal to for help, turned out of the slightest use to
me ; I had to act on my own initiative.

The Sahalin general, Kononovitch, is a cultivated
and gentlemanly man. We soon got on together,
and everything went off well. I am bringing some
papers with me from which you will see that I was

214 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

put on the most agreeable footing from the first. I
have seen everything, so that the question is not now
what I have seen, but how I have seen it.

I don't know what will come of it, but I have done
a good deal. I have got enough material for three
dissertations. I got up every morning at five o'clock
and went to bed late; and all day long was on the
strain from the thought that there was still so much I
hadn't done; and now that I have done with the con-
vict system, I have the feeling that I have seen every-
thing but have not noticed the elephants.

By the way, I had the patience to make a census of
the whole Sahalin population. I made the round of
all the settlements, went into every hut and talked to
everyone; I made use of the card system in making
the census, and I have already registered about ten
thousand convicts and settlers. In other words,
there is not in Sahalin one convict or settler who has
not talked with me. I was particularly successful
with the census of the children, on which I am build-
ing great hopes.

I dined at Landsberg's ; I sat in the kitchen of the
former Baroness Gembruk. ... I visited all the
celebrities. I was present at a flogging, after which
I dreamed for three or four nights of the executioner
and the revolting accessories. I have talked to men
who were chained to trucks. Once when I was
drinking tea in a mine, Borodavkin, once a Petersburg
merchant who was convicted of arson, took a tea-
spoon out of his pocket and gave it to me, and the
long and the short of it is that I have upset my nerves
and have vowed not to come to Sahalin again.

I should write more to you, but there is a lady in
the cabin who giggles and chatters unceasingly. I

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 215

haven't the strength to write. She has been laugh-
ing and cackling ever since yesterday evening.

This letter will go across America, but I shall go
probably not across America. Everyone says that
the American way is duller and more expensive.

To-morrow I shall see Japan, the Island of Mats-
mai. Now it is twelve Vclock at night. It is dark
on the sea, the wind is blowing. I don't understand
how the steamer can go on and find its direction when
one can't see a thing, and above all in such wild,
little-known waters as those in the Gulf of Tartar^

When I remember that I am ten thousand versts
away from my world I am overcome with apathy. It
seems I shall not be home for a hundred years. . . .
God give you health and all blessings. I feel dreary.

To HIS MOTHER.

SAHALIN,
October 6, 1890.

My greetings, dear mother!

I write you this letter almost on the eve of my
departure for Russia. Every day we expect a
steamer of the Volunteer Fleet, and cherish hopes
that it will not come later than the 10th of October.
I send this letter to Japan, whence it will go by
Shanghai or America. I am living at the station of
Korsakovo, where there is neither telegraph nor post,
and which is not visited by ships oftener than once a
fortnight. Yesterday a steamer arrived and brought
me from the north a pile of letters and telegrams.
From the letters I learn that Masha likes the

216 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

Crimea, I believe she will like the Caucasus better
still. . . .

******

Strange, with you it has been cold and rainy, while
in Sahalin from the day of my arrival till to-day it
has been bright warm weather: there is slight cold
with hoar-frost in the mornings, the snow is white
on one of the mountains, but the earth is still green,,
the leaves have not fallen, and all the vegetation is
still as flourishing as at a summer villa in May,
There you have Sahalin!

* * * *

At midnight yesterday I heard the roar of a steamer.
Everybody jumped out of bed: hurrah! the steamer
has arrived! We dressed and went out with lanterns
to the harbour; we gazed into the distance; there
really was a steamer. . . . The majority of voices
decided that it was the Petersburg, on which I am to
go to Russia. I was overjoyed. We got into a
boat and rowed to the steamer. We went on and on,
till at last we saw in the mist the dark hulk of a
steamer. One of us shouted in a hoarse voice asking
the name of the vessel. And we received the answer
"the Baikal' 9 Tfoo 1 anathema! what a disappoint-
ment ! I am homesick, and weary of Sahalin. Here
for the last three months I have seen no one but con-
victs or people who can talk of nothing but penal
servitude, the lash, and the convicts. A depressing
existence. One longs to get quickly to Japan and
from there to India.

I am quite well, except for flashes in my eye from
which I often suffer now, after which I always have

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 217

i bad headache. I had the flashes in my eye yester-
iay and to-day, and so I am writing this with a head-
iche and heaviness all over.

At the station the Japanese General Kuse-San
lives with his two secretaries, good friends of mine.
They live like Europeans. To-day the local author-
ities visited them in state to present decorations that
had heen conferred on them; and I, too, went with
ny headache and had to drink champagne.

Since I have heen in the south I have three times
iriven to Nay Race where the real ocean waves
break. Look at the map and you will see at once on
the south coast that poor dismal Nay Race. The
waves cast up a boat with six American whalefishers,
who had been shipwrecked off the coast of Sahalin;
they are living now at the station and solemnly walk
about the streets. They are waiting for the Peters-
burg and will sail with me.

I am not bringing you furs, there are none in
Sahalin. Keep well and Heaven guard you all.

I am bringing you all presents. The cholera in
Vladivostok and Japan is over.

To A. S. SUVORIN.

MALAYA DMITROVKA,
Moscow,

December 9.

. . . Hurrah! Here at last I am sitting at my
table at home! I pray to my faded penates and
write to you. I have now a happy feeling as though
I had not been away from home at all. I am well and

218 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

thriving to the marrow of my bones. Here's a very
brief report for you. I was in Sahalin not two
months, as you have printed, but three months plus
two days. I worked at high pressure. I made a full
and minute census of the whole of Sahalin's popula-
tion, and saw everything except the death penalty.
When we see each other I will show you a whole trunk-
ful of stuff about the convicts which is very valuable
as raw material. I know a very great deal now, but I
have brought away a horrid feeling. While I was
staying in Sahalin, I only had a bitter feeling in my
inside as though from rancid butter; and now, as I
remember it, Sahalin seems to me a perfect hell.
For two months I worked intensely, putting my back
into it; in the third month I began to feel ill from
the bitterness I have spoken of, from boredom, and
the thought that the cholera would come from Vladi-
vostok to Sahalin, and that so I was in danger of hav-
ing to winter in the convict settlement. But, thank
God! the cholera ceased, and on the 13th of October
the steamer bore me away from Sahalin. I have
been in Vladivostok. About the Primorsky Region
and our Eastern sea-coast with its fleets, its problems,
and its Pacific dreams altogether, I have only one
thing to tell of : its crying poverty! Poverty, ignor-
ance, and worthlessness, that might drive one to de-
spair. One honest man for ninety-nine thieves, that
are blackening the name of Russia. . . . We
passed Japan because the cholera was there, and so I
have not bought you anything Japanese, and the five
hundred you gave me for your purchases I have spent
on my own needs, for which you have, by law, the
right to send me to a settlement in Siberia. The
first foreign port we reached was Hong Kong. It is

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 219

exquisite bay. The traffic on the sea was such
had never seen before even in pictures ; excellent
Is, trams, a railway to the mountains, a museum,
inical gardens; wherever you look you see the
lerest solicitude on the part of the English for the
L in their service; there is even a club for
sailors. I went about in a jinrickshaw that is,
led by men bought all sorts of rubbish of the
nese, and was moved to indignation at hearing my
,sian fellow-travellers abuse the English for ex-
ting the natives. I thought: Yes, the English
loit the Chinese, the Sepoys, the Hindoos, but they
E$ive them roads, aqueducts, museums, Christian-
and what do you give them?
Vhen we left Hong Kong the boat began to rock.
j steamer was empty and lurched through an angle
thirty-eight degrees, so that we were afraid it
ild upset. I am not subject to sea-sickness: that
;overy was very agreeable to me. On the way to
gapore we threw two corpses into the sea. When
sees a dead man, wrapped in sailcloth, fly, turn-
somersaults in the water, and remembers that it is
sral miles to the bottom, one feels frightened, and
some reason begins to fancy that one will die
self and will be thrown into the sea. Our
ned cattle have fallen sick. Through the united
diet of Dr. Stcherbak and your humble servant,
cattle have been killed and thrown into the

[ have no clear memory of Singapore as, for some
son, I felt very sad while I was driving about it,
I was almost weeping. Next after it comes Ceylon
in earthly Paradise. There in that Paradise I
it more than a hundred versts on the railway and

220 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

gazed at palm forests and bronze women to my
heart's content. . . . After Ceylon we sailed for
thirteen days and nights without stopping and were
all stupid from boredom. I bear the heat well. The
Red Sea is depressing; I felt touched as I gazed at
Sinai.

God's world is a good place. The one thing not
good in it is we. How little justice and humility
there is in us. How little we understand true patriot-
ism ! A drunken, broken-down debauchee of a hus-
band loves his wife and children, but of what use is
that love? We, so we are told in our own newspapers,
love our great motherland, but how does that love
express itself? Instead of knowledge insolence
and immeasurable conceit; instead of work sloth
and swinishness; there is no justice, the conception
of honour does not go beyond "the honour of the
uniform" the uniform which is so commonly seen
adorning the prisoner's dock in our courts. Work is
what is wanted, and the rest can go to the devil.
First of all we must be just, and all the rest will be
added unto us.

I have a passionate desire to talk to you. My soul
is in a ferment. I want no one else but you, for it is
only with you I can talk.

How glad I am that everything was managed
Avithout Galkm-Vrasskoy's help. He didn't wiite
one line about me, and I turned up in Sahalin utterly
unknown.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 221

Moscow,
December 24, 1890

I believe in Koch and in sp ermine and praise God
for it. All that that is the kochines, spermmes,
and so on seem to the public a kind of miracle that
leaped forth from some brain, after the fashion of
Pallas Athene; but people who have a closer acquain-
tance with the facts know that they are only the natural
sequel of what has been done during the last twenty
years. A great deal has been done, my dear fellow!
Surgery alone has done so much that one is fairly
dumbfoundered at it. To one who is studying
medicine now, the time before twenty years ago
seems simply pitiable. My dear friend, if I were
offered the choice between the "ideals" of the
renowned "sixties," or the very poorest Zemstvo
hospital of to-day, I should, without a moment's
hesitation, choose the second.

Will kochine cure syphilis 9 It's possible. But
as for cancer, you must allow me to have my doubts.
Cancer is not a microbe ; it's a tissue, growing in the
wrong place, and like a noxious weed smothering all
the neighbouring tissues. If N.'s uncle feels better,
that is, because the microbes of erysipelas that is,
the elements that produce the disease of erysipelas
form a component part of kochine It was observed
long ago that with the development of erysipelas, the
growth of malignant tumours is temporarily checked.

It's a strange business while I was travelling to
Sahalin and back I felt perfectly well, but now, at
home, the devil knows what is happening to me. My

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 221

Moscow,
December 24, 1890.

I believe in Koch and in spermine and praise God
r it. All that that is the kochmes, sp ermines,
id so on seem Lo the public a kind of miracle that
aped forth from some brain, after the fashion of
alias Athene, but people who have a closer acquain-
nce with the facts know that they are only the natmal
quel of what has been done during the last twenty
ears. A great deal has been done, my dear fellow!
urgery alone has done so much that one is fairly
Limbfoundered at it. To one who is studying
ledicme now, the time before twenty years ago
iems simply pitiable. My dear friend, if I were
!'ered the choice between the "ideals" of the
jnownccl "sixties," or the veiy poorest Zemstvo
Dspital of to-day, I should, without a moment's
3silation, choose the second.

Will kochine cure syphilis? It's possible. But
; for cancer, you must allow me to have my doubts,
ancer is not a miciobe; it's a tissue, growing in the
rong place, and like a noxious weed smothering all
ie neighbouring tissues. If N.'s uncle feels better,
tat is, because the microbes of erysipelas that is,
ie elements that produce the disease of erysipelas
>nn a component part of kochine. It was observed
ing ago that with the development of erysipelas, the

-owth of malignant tumours is temporarily checked.

3f

It's a strange business while I was travelling to
ihalin and back I felt perfectly well, but now. at
)me, the devil knows what is happening to me. My

222 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

head is continually aching, I have a feeling of languor
all over, I am quickly exhausted, apathetic, and worst
of all, my heart is not beating regularly. My heart is
continually stopping for a few seconds. . . .

Moscow,

January, 1891.

I shall probably come to Petersburg on the 8th of
January. . . . Since by February I shall not have a
farthing, I must make haste and finish the novel*
I've begun. There is something in the novel about
which I must talk to you and ask your advice.

I spent Christmas in a horrible way. To begin
with, I had palpitations of the heart; secondly, my
brother Ivan came to stay and was ill with typhoid,
poor fellow ; thirdly, after my Sahalin labours and the
tropics, my Moscow life seems to me now so petty,
so bourgeois, and so dull, that I feel ready to bite;
fourthly, working for my daily bread prevents my
giving up my time to Sahalin; fifthly, my acquain-
tances bother me, and so on.

The poet Merezhkovsky has been to see me twice;
he is a very intelligent man.

How sorry I am you did not see my mongoose. It
is a wonderful creature.

To HIS SISTER.

ST. PETERSBURG,
January 14, 1891.

Unforeseen circumstances have kept me a few days
longer. I am alive and well. There is no news. I
saw Tolstoy's "The Power of Darkness" the other

* "The Duel."

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 223

day, though. I have been to Ryepin's studio.
What else? Nothing else. It's dull, in fact.

I went to-day to a dog-show; I went there with
Suvorin, who at the moment I am writing these lines
is standing hy the table and asking me to write and
tell you that I have been to the dog-show with the
famous dog Suvorin. . . .

January, later.

I am alive and well, I have no palpitations, I've
no money either, and everything is going well.

I am paying visits and seeing acquaintances. I
have to talk about Sahalm and India. It's horribly
boring.

. . . Anna Ivanovna is as nice as ever, Suvorin
talks as incessantly as ever.

I receive the most boring invitations to the most
boring dinners. It seems I must make haste and get
back to Moscow, as they won't let me work

here.

Hurrah, we are avenged! To make up for our
being so bored, the cotton ball has yielded 1,500
loubles clear profit, in confirmation of which I en-
close a cutting from a newspaper.

If anything is collected for the benefit of the
Sahalm schools, let me know at once.

How is my mongoose? Don't forget to give him
food and drink, and beat him without mercy when
he jumps on the table. Does he eat people?*

Write how Ivan is. ...

* A naive question asked by a lady of Chekhov's acquaintance.

224 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

January, later.

I am thed as a ballet dancer after five acts and
eight tableaux. Dinners, letters which I am too
lazy to answer, conversations and imbecilities of all
sorts. I have to go immediately to dine in Vassil-
yevsky Ostrov, and I am bored and ought to work.
I'll stay another three days and see whether the ballet
will go on the same, then I shall go home, or to see
Ivan.

I am surrounded by a thick atmosphere of ill-feel-
ing, extremely vague and to me incomprehensible.
They feed me with dinners and pay me the vulgarest
compliments, and at the same time they are ready to
devour me What for? The devil only knows. If
I were to shoot myself I should thereby provide the
greatest gratification to nine-tenths of my friends and
admirers. And how pettily they express their petty
feelings !

. . . My greetings to Lydia Yegorovna Mizinov.
I expect a programme from her. Tell her not to eat
farinaceous food and to avoid Levitan. A better
admirer than me she will not find in her Town Council
nor in higher society.

January 16, 1891.

I have the honour to congratulate you and the
hero of the name-day;* I wish you and him health
and prosperity, and above all that the mongoose
should not break the crockery or tear the wall-paper.
I shall celebrate my name-day at the Maly Yaro-
slavets restaurant, from the restaurant to the benefit
performance, from the benefit performance to the
restaurant again.

* It was the name-day of Chekhov himself

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 225

I am working, but with very great difficulty. No
Dorier have I written a line than the bell rings and
Dineone comes in to talk to me about Sahalin. It's
imply awful ! . . .

I have found Drishka. It appears that she is
ving in the same house as I am. She ran away
rom Moscow to Petersburg under romantic circum-
tances: she meant to marry a lawyer, plighted her
roth to him, but an army captain turned up, and so
n; she had to run away or the lawyer would have
hot both Drishka and the captain with a pistol loaded
dth cranberries. She is prospering and is the same
ively rogue as ever. I went to Svobodin's name-day
tarty with her yesterday. She sang gipsy songs, and
reated such a sensation that all the great men kissed
ter hand.

Rumours have reached me that Lidia Stahievna is
,oing to be married par depit. Is it true? Tell her
hat I shall carry her off from her husband par depit.
am a violent man.

Has not anything been collected for the benefit of
he Sahalin schools? Let me know. . . .

To A. F KONI.

PETERSBURG,

January 16, 1891.

DEAR SIR, ANATOLY FYODOROVITCH,

I did not hasten to answer your letter because

am not leaving Petersburg before next Saturday.

am sorry I have not been to see Madame Naryshkin,
)Ut I think I had better defer my visit till my book
las come out, when I shall be able to turn more

226 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

freely to the material I have. My brief Sahalm past
looms so immense in my imagination that when I
want to speak about it I don't know where to begin,
and it always seems to me that I have not
said what was wanted.

I will try and describe minutely the position of the
children and young people in Sahalm It is excep-
tional. I saw starving children, I saw girls of thir-
teen prostitutes, girls of fifteen with child. Girls be-
gin to live by prostitution fiom twelve years old, some-
times before menstruation has begun. Church and
school exist only on paper, the children are educated
by their environment and the convict surroundings.
Among other things I have noted down a conversa-
tion with a boy of ten years old. I was making the
census of the settlement of Upper Armudano; all the
inhabitants are poverty-stricken, every one of them ?
and have the reputation of being desperate gamblers
at the game of shtoss. I go into a hut; the people
are not at home; on a bench sits a while-haired,
round-shouldered, bare-footed boy; he seems lost in
thought. We begin to talk.

I "What is your father's second name?"

He. "I don't know."

I "How is that? You live with your father and
don't know what his name is 9 Shame!"

He "He is not my real father."

I. "How is that?"

He. "He is living with mother."

I. "Is your mother married or a widow?"

He. "A widow. She followed her husband here."

I. "What has become of her husband, then?"

He. "She killed him."

I. "Do you remember your father?"

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 227

He. "No, I don't, I am illegitimate. I was born
when mother was at Kara."

On the Amur steamer going to Sahalm, there was
a convict with fetters on his legs who had murdered
his wife. His daughter, a little girl of six, was with
him. I noticed wherever the convict moved the little
girl scrambled after him, holding on to his fetters.
At night the child slept with the convicts and soldiers
all in a heap together. I remember I was at a
funeral in Sahalm. Beside the newly dug grave
stood four convict bearers ex officio; the treasury
clerk and I, in the capacity of Hamlet and Horatio,
wandering about the cemetery; the dead woman's
lodger, a Circassian, who had come because he had
nothing better to do ; and a convict woman who had
come out of pity and had brought the dead woman's
two children, one a baby, and the other, Alyoshka, a
boy of four, wearing a woman's jacket and blue
breeches with bright-coloured patches on the knees.
It was cold and damp, there was water in the grave,
the convicts were laughing. The sea was in sight.
Alyoshka looked into the grave with curiosity; he
tried to wipe his chilly nose, but the long sleeve of his
jacket got into his way. When they began to fill in
the grave I asked him: "Alyoshka, where is your
mother?" He waved his hand with the air of a
gentleman who has lost at cards, laughed, and said:
"They have buried her!"

The convicts laughed, the Circassian turned and
asked what he was to do with the children, saying it
was not his duty to feed them.

Infectious diseases I did not meet with in Sahalin.
There is very little congenital syphilis, but I saw
blind children, filthy, covered with eruptions all

228 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

diseases that are evidence of neglect Of course I
am not going to settle the problem of the children.
I don't know what ought to be done. But it seems
to me that one will do nothing by means of philan-
thropy and what little is left of prison and other funds.
To my thinking, to make something of great impor-
tance dependent upon charity, which in Russia always
has a casual character, and on funds which do not
exist, is pernicious. I should prefer it to be financed
out of the government treasury.

To A. S. SUVORIN.

Moscow,
January 31, 1891.

At home I found depression. My nicest and most
intelligent mongoose had fallen ill and was lying very
quietly under a quilt. The little beast eats and
drinks nothing. The climate has already laid its cold
claw on it and means to kill it. What for?

We have received a dismal letter. In Taganrog
we were on friendly terms with a well-to-do Polish
family. The cakes and jam I ate in their house when
I was a boy at school arouse in me now the most touch-
ing reminiscences; there used to be music, young
ladies, home-made liqueurs, and catching goldfinches
in the immense courtyard. The father had a post in
the Taganrog customs and got into trouble. The in-
vestigation and trial ruined the family. There were
two daughters and a son. When the elder daughter
married a rascal of a Greek, the family took an
orphan girl into the house to bring up. This little
girl was attacked by disease of the knee and they

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 229

amputated the leg. Then the son died of consump-
tion, a medical student in his fomth year, an excellent
fellow, a perfect Hercules, the hope of the family.
. . . Then came terrible poverty. . . . The father took
to wandering about the cemetery, longed to take to
drink but could not: vodka simply made his head
ache cruelly while his thoughts lemained the same,
just as sober and revolting. Now they write that the
younger daughter, a beautiful, plump young girl, is
consumptive. . . . The father writes to me of that
and writes to me for a loan of ten roubles. . . . Ach!

I felt awfully unwilling to leave you, but still I am
glad I did not remain another day I went away and
showed that I had strength of will. I am writing
already. By the time you come to Moscow my
novel* will be finished, and I will go back with you
to Petersburg.

Tell Borya, Mitya, and Andrushka that I vituper-
ate them. In the pocket of my greatcoat I found
some notes on which was scrawled: "Anton Pavlo-
vitch, foi shame, for shame, for shame!" pes-
simi discipuli ! Utinam vos lupus devoret !

Last night I did not sleep, and I read through my
"Motley Tales" for the second edition. I threw
out about twenty stories.

Moscow,
February 5, 1891.

My mongoose has recovered and breaks crockery
again with unfailing regularity.

I am writing and writing ! I must own I was afraid
that my Sahalin expedition would have put me out of
the way of writing, but now I see that it is all right.

* "The Duel "

230 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

I have written a great deal. I am writing diffusely
a la Yasinsky. I want to get hold of a thousand
roubles.

I shall soon begin to expect you. Are we going ta
Italy or not? We ought to.

In Petersburg I don't sleep at night, I drink and
loaf about, but I feel immeasurably better than in
Moscow. The devil only knows why it is so.

I am not depressed, because in the first place I am
writing, and in the second, one feels that summer,
which I love more than anything, is close at hand.
I long to prepare my fishing tackle. . . .

February 23

Greetings, my dear friend.

Your telegram about the Tormidor upset me. I
felt dreadfully attracted to Petersburg: now for the
sake of Sardou and the Parisian visitors. But
practical considerations pulled me up. I reflected
that I must hurry on with my novel; that I don't
know French, and so should only be taking up some-
one else's place in the box; that I have very little
money, and so on. In short, as it seems to me now,
I am a poor comrade, though apparently I acted
sensibly.

My novel is progressing. It's all smooth, even,
there is scarcely anything that is too long. But do
you know what is very bad? There is no movement
in my novel, and that frightens me. I am afraid it
will be difficult to read to the middle, to say nothing of
reading to the end. Anyway, I shall finish it. I
shall bring Anna Pavlovna a copy on vellum paper
to read in the bathroom. I should like something to

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 231

sting her in the water, so that she would run out of the
bathroom sobbing.

I was melancholy when you went away. . . .

Send me some money. I have none and seem to
have nowhere to borrow. By my reckoning I cannot
under favourable circumstances get more than a
thousand roubles from you before September. But
don't send the money by post, as I can't bear going
to post offices. . . .

March 5.

We are going ! ! ! I agree to go, where you like
and when you like. My soul is leaping with delight.
It would be stupid on my part not to go, for when
would an opportunity come again? But, my dear
friend, I leave you to weigh the following circum-
stances.

(1) My work is still far from being finished; if I
put it by till May, I shall not be able to begin my
Sahalin work before July, and that is risky. For my
Sahalin impressions are already evaporating, and I
run the risk of forgetting a great deal.

(2) I have absolutely no money. If without
finishing my novel I take another thousand roubles
for the tour abroad, and then for living after the tour,
I shall get into such a tangle that the devil himself
could not pull me out by the ears. I am not in a
tangle yet because I am up to all sorts of dodges, and
live more frugally than a mouse ; but if I go abroad
everything will go to the devil. My accounts will be
in a mess and I shall get myself hopelessly in debt.
The very thought of a debt of two thousand makes
my heart sink.

There are other considerations, but they are all of

232 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

small account beside that of money and work. And
so, thoroughly digest my objections, put yourself into
my skin for a moment, and decide, wouldn't it be
better for me to stay at home? You will say all this
is unimportant. But lay aside your point of view,
and look at it from mine.

I await a speedy answer.

My novel* is progressing, but I have not got far.

I have been to the Kiselyovs'. The rooks are
already arriving.

To MADAME KISELYOV.

Moscow,
March 11, 1891

As I depart for France, Spam, and Italy, I beseech
you, oh, Heavens, keep Babkino in good health and
prosperity !

Yes, Marya Vladimirovna ! As it is written in the
scripture: he had not time to cry out, before a bear
devoured him. So I had not time to cry out before
an unseen power has drawn me again to the mysterious
distance. To-day I am going to Petersburg, from
there to Berlin, and so further. Whether I climb
Vesuvius or watch a bull-fight in Spam, I shall
remember you in my holiest prayers. Good-bye.

I have been to a seminary and picked out a
seminarist for Vassilisa. There were plenty with
delicate feelings and responsive natures, but not one
would consent. At first, especially when I told them
that you sometimes had peas and radishes on your
table, they consented; but when I accidentally let

* "The Duel "

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 233

t that in the district captain's room there was a

dstead on which people were flogged, they

ratched their heads and muttered that they must

ink it over. One, however, a pockmarked fellow

lied Gerasim Ivanovitch, with very delicate feelings

d a responsive nature, is coming to see you in a day

two. I hope that Vassilisa and you will make him

;lcome. Snatch the chance: it's a brilliant match.

)u can flog Gerasim Ivanovitch, for he told me: "I

i immensely fond of violent sensations;" when he

with you you had better lock the cupboard where

e vodka is kept and keep the windows open, as the

minary inspiration and responsiveness is percept-

le at every minute.

"What a happy girl is Vassilisa!"

Idiotik has not been to see me yet.

The hens peck the cock. They must be keeping

jnt, or perhaps the virtuous widows don't care for

eir new suitor.

They have brought me a new overcoat with check

nng.

Well, be in Heaven's keeping, happy, healthy and
saceful. God give you all everything good. I
all come back in Holy Week. Don't forget your
uly devoted,

ANTON CHEKHOV.

To HIS SISTER.

PETERSBURG,
March 16. Midnight.

I have just seen the Italian actress Duse in Shakes-
ware's Cleopatra. I don't know Italian, but she
ted so well that it seemed to me I understood every

234 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

word. A remarkable actress! I have never seen
anything like it before. I gazed at that Duse and felt
overcome with misery at the thought that we have to
educate our temperaments and tastes on such wooden
actresses as N. and her like, whom we call gieat be-
cause we have seen nothing better. Looking at
Duse I understood why it is that the Russian theatre
is so dull.

I sent three hundred roubles to-day, did you get
them?

After Duse it was amusing to read the address I
enclose.* My God, how low taste and a sense of
justice have sunk ! And these are the students the
devil take them ! Whether it is Solovtsov or whether
it is Salvini, it's all the same to them, both equally
"stir a warm response in the hearts of the young."
They are worth a farthing, all those hearts.

We set off for Warsaw at half -past one to-morrow.
My greetings to all, even the mongooses, though they
don't deserve it. I will write.

VIENNA,
March 20, 1891

MY DEAR CZECHS,

I write to you from Vienna, which I reached
yesterday at four o'clock in the afternoon. Every-
thing went well on the journey. From Warsaw to
Vienna I travelled like a railway Nana in a luxurious
compartment of the "Societe Internationale des
Wagons-Lits." Beds, looking-glasses, huge win-
dows, rugs, and so on.

Ah, my dears, if you only knew how nice Vienna is !

* A newspaper cutting containing an address: From the Stu-
dents of the Technological Institute of Harkov to M. M. Solovtsov,
was enclosed

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 235

It can't be compared with any of the towns I have
seen in my life. The streets are broad and elegantly
paved, there are numbers of boulevards and squares,
the houses have always six or seven storeys, and shops
they are not shops, but a perfect delirium, a dream !
There are myriads of neckties alone in the windows !
Such amazing things made of bronze, china, and
leather! The churches are huge, but they do not
oppress one by their hugeness; they caress the eye,
for it seems as though they are woven of lace. St.
Stephen and the Votiv-Kirche are particularly fine.
They are not like buildings, but like cakes for tea.
The parliament, the town hall, and the university
are magnificent. It is all magnificent, and I have
for the first time realized, yesterday and to-day,
that architecture is really an art. And here the art
is not seen in little bits, as with us, but stretches over
several versts. There are numbers of monuments.
In every side street there is sure to be a bookshop.
In the windows of the bookshops there are Russian
books to be seen not, alas, the works of Albov, of
Barantsevitch, and of Chekhov, but of all sorts of
anonymous authors who write and publish abroad.
I saw "Renan," "The Mysteries of the Winter
Palace," and so on. It is strange that here one is
free to read anything and to say what one likes.
Understand, ye peoples, what the cabs are like
here! The devil take them! There are no droshkys,
but they are all new, pretty carriages with one and
often two horses. The horses are splendid. On the
box sit dandies in top-hats and reefer jackets, reading
the newspaper, all politeness and readiness to oblige.
The dinners are good. There is no vodka; they
drink beer and fairly good wine. There is one thing

236 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

that is nasty: they make you pay for bread. When
they bring the bill they ask, Wie viel brodchen?
that is, how many rolls have you devoured? And
you have to pay for every little roll.

The women are beautiful and elegant. Indeed,
everything is diabolically elegant.

I have not quite forgotten German. I understand,
and am understood.

When we crossed the frontier it was snowing. In
Vienna there is no snow, but it is cold all the same.

I am homesick and miss you all, and indeed I am
conscience-stricken, too, at deserting you all again.
But there, never mind ! I shall come back and stay
at home for a whole year. I send my greetings to
everyone, everyone.

I wish you all things good; don't forget me with
my many transgressions. I embrace you, I bless you,
send my greetings and remain,

Your loving

A. CHEKHOV.

Everyone who meets us recognises that we are Rus-
sians, and stares not at my face, but at my grizzled
cap. Looking at my cap they probably think I am
a very rich Russian Count.

To HIS BROTHER IVAN.

VENICE,
March 24, 1891.

I am now in Venice. I arrived here two days ago
from Vienna. One thing I can say: I have never
in my life seen a town more marvellous than Venice.
It is perfectly enchanting, brilliance, joy, life. In-

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 237

stead of streets and roads there are canals; instead
of cabs, gondolas. The architecture is amazing, and
there is not a single spot that does not excite some
historical or artistic interest. You float in a gondola
and see the palace of the Doges, the house where
Desdemona lived, homes of various painters,
churches. And in the churches there are sculptures
and paintings such as we have never dreamed of. In
fact it is enchantment.

All day from morning till night I sit in a gondola
and glide along the streets, or I saunter about the
famous St. Mark's Square. The square is as level
and clean as a parquet floor. Here there is St. Mark's
something impossible to desciibe the Palace of
the Doges, and other buildings which make me feel as
I do listening to part singing I feel the amazing
beauty and level in it.

And the evenings! My God! One might almost
die of the strangeness of it. One goes in a gondola
. . . warmth, stillness, stars. . . . There are no
horses in Venice, and so there is a silence here as in
the open country. Gondolas flit to and fro, . . . then
a gondola glides by, hung with lanterns. In it are a
double-bass, violins, a guitar, a mandolin and cornet,
two or three ladies, several men, and one hears
singing and music. They sing from operas. What
voices ! One goes on a little further and again meets
a boat with singers, and then again, and the air is full,
till midnight, of the mingled strains of violins and
tenor voices, and all sorts of heart-stirring sounds.

Merezhkovsky, whom I have met here, is off his
head with ecstasy. For us poor and oppressed Rus-
sians it is easy to go out of our minds here in a
world of beauty, wealth, and freedom. One longs to

238 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

remain here for ever, and when one stands in the
churches and listens to the organ one longs to become
a Catholic.

The tombs of Canova and Titian are magnificent.
Here they bury great artists like kings in churches;
here they do not despise art as with us; the churches
provide a shelter for pictures and statues however
naked they may be.

In the Palace of the Doges there is a picture in
which there are about ten thousand human figures.

To-day is Sunday. There will be a band playing
in St. Mark's Square. . . .

If you ever happen to come to Venice it will be the
best thing in your life. You ought to see the glass
here! Your bottles* are so hideous compared with
the things here, that it makes one sick to think of
them.

I will write again; meanwhile, good-bye.

To MADAME KISELYOV.

VENICE,
March 25.

I am in Venice. You may put me in a madhouse.
Gondolas, St. Mark's Square, water, stars, Italian
women, serenades, mandolins, Falernian wine in
fact all is lost !

Don't remember evil against me.

The shade of the lovely Desdemona sends a smile
to the District Captain.

Greetings to all. ANTONIO.

The Jesuits send their love to you.

* His brother Ivan was teaching in a school attached to a
glass factory.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 239

To HIS SISTER.

VENICE,
March 25, 1891.

Bewitching blue-eyed Venice sends her greetings
o all of you. Oh, signori and signorme, what an
exquisite town this Venice is ! Imagine a town con-
sisting of houses and churches such as you have never
seen; an intoxicating architecture, eveiything as
graceful and light as the birdlike gondola. Such
iiouses and churches can only be built by people
possessed of immense artistic and musical taste and
endowed with a lion-like temperament. Now imagine
in the streets and alleys, instead of pavement, water;
imagine that there is not one horse in the town ; that
instead of cabmen you see gondoliers on their wonder-
ful boats, light, delicate long-beaked birds which
scarcely seem to touch the water and tremble at the
tiniest wave. And all from earth to sky bathed in
sunshine.

There are streets as broad as the Nevsky, and others
in which you can bar the way by stretching out your
arms. The centre of the town is St. Mark's Square
with the celebrated cathedral of the same name.
The cathedral is magnificent, especially on the out-
side. Beside it is the Palace of the Doges where
Othello made his confession before the senators.

In short, there is not a spot that does not call up
memories and touch the heart. For instance, the
little house where Desdemona lived makes an im-
pression that is difficult to shake off. The very best
time in Venice is the evening. First the stars ; sec-
ondly, the long canals in which the lights and stars
are reflected; thirdly, gondolas, gondolas, and gondo-

240 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

las; when it is dark they seem to be alive. Fourthly,
one wants to cry because on all sides one hears
music and superb singing. A gondola glides up
hung with many-coloured lanterns; there is light
enough for one to distinguish a double-bass, a guitar,
a mandolin, a violin. . . . Then another gondola
like it. ... Men and women sing, and how they
sing! It's quite an opera.
Fifthly, it's warm.

In short, the man's a fool who does not go to
Venice. Living is cheap here. Board and lodging
costs eighteen francs a week that is, six roubles each
or twenty-five roubles a month. A gondolier asks a
franc for an hour that is, thirty kopecks. Admis-
sion to the academies, museums, and so on, is free.
The Crimea is ten times as expensive, and the Crimea
beside Venice is a cuttle-fish beside a whale.

I am afraid Father is angry with me for not having
said good-bye to him. I ask his forgiveness.

What glass there is here ! what mirrors ! Why am
I not a millionaire! . . . Next year let us all take
a summer cottage in Venice.

The air is full of the vibration of church bells: my
dear Tunguses, let us all embrace Catholicism. If
only you knew how lovely the organs are in the
churches, what sculptures there are here, what Italian
women on their knees with prayer-books !
Keep well and don't forget me, a sinner.
A picturesque railway line, of which I have been
told a great deal, runs from Vienna to Venice. But I
was disappointed in the journey. The mountains,
the precipices, and the snowy crests I have seen in the
Caucasus and Ceylon are far more impressive than
here. Addio.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 241

VENICE,
March 26, 1891.

It is pelting cats and dogs. Venetia bella has
eased to be bella. The water excites a feeling of
[ejected dreariness, and one longs to hasten some-
rhere where there is sun.

The rain has reminded me of my raincoat (the
eather one) ; I believe the rats have gnawed it a little,
f they have, send it to be mended as soon as you
an. . . .

How is Signor Mongoose? I am afraid every day
if hearing that he is dead.

In describing the cheapness of Venetian life yester-
lay, I overdid it a bit. It is Madame Merezhkovsky's
ault ; she told me that she and her husband paid only
ix francs per week each. But instead of per week,
ead per day. Anyway, it is cheap. The franc here
;oes as far as a rouble.

We are going to Florence.

May the Holy Mother bless you.

I have seen Titian's Madonna. It's very fine.
5ut it is a pity that here fine works are mixed up side
)y side with worthless things, that have been pre-
erved and not flung away simply from the spirit of
:onservatism all-present in such creatures of habit as
nessieurs les hommes. There are many pictures the
ong life of which is quite incomprehensible.

The house where Desdemona used to live is to let.

BOLOGNA,
March 28, 1891.

I am in Bologna, a town remarkable for its arcades,
Janting towers, and Raphael's pictures of "Cecilia."
are going on to-day to Florence.

242 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

FLORENCE,
March 29, 1891.

I am in Florence. I am worn out with racing about
to museums and churches. I have seen the Venus of
Medici, and I think that if she were dressed in modern
clothes she would be hideous, especially about the
waist.

The sky is overcast, and Italy without sun is like
a face in a mask.

P. S. Dante's monument is fine.

FLORENCE,
March 30, 1891.

I am in Florence. To-morrow we are going to
Rome. It's cold. We have the spleen. You can't
take a step in Florence without coming to a picture-
shop or a statue-shop.

P. S. Send my watch to be mended.

To MADAME KISELYOV.

ROME,
April 1, 1891.

The Pope of Rome charges me to congratulate you
on your name-day and wish you as much money as
he has rooms. He has eleven thousand! Strolling
about the Vatican I was nearly dead with exhaustion,
and when I got home I felt that my legs were made of
cotton-wool.

I am dining at the table d'hote. Can you imagine
just opposite me are sitting two Dutch girls: one of
them is like Pushkin's Tatyana, and the other like her
sister Olga. I watch them all through dinner, and

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 243

magine a neat, clean little house with a turret, ex-
lellent butter, superb Dutch cheese, Dutch herrings,
i benevolent-looking pastor, a sedate teacher, . . .
md I feel I should like to marry a Dutch girl and be
lepicted with her on a tea-tray beside the little white
louse.

I have seen everything and dragged myself every-
wheie I was told to go. What was offered me to
sniff at, I sniffed at. But meanwhile I feel nothing
but exhaustion and a craving for cabbage-soup and
buckwheat porridge. I was enchanted by Venice,
beside myself; but since I have left it, it has been
nothing but Baedeker and bad weather.

Good-bye for now, Marya Vladimirovna, and the
Lord God keep you. Humble respects from me and
the other Pope to his Honour, Vassilisa and Elizaveta
Alexandrovna.

Neckties are marvellously cheap here. I think I
may take to eating them. They are a franc a pair.

To-morrow I am going to Naples. Pray that I may
meet there a beautiful Russian lady, if possible a
widow or a divorced wife.

In the guide-books it says that a love affair is an
essential condition for a tour in Italy. Well, hang
them all! I am ready for anything. If there must
be a love affair, so be it.

Don't forget your sinful, but sincerely devoted,

ANTON CHEKHOV.

My respects to the starlings.

244 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

To HIS SISTER.

ROME,
April 1, 1891.

When I got to Rome I went to the post-office and
did not find a single letter. Suvorin has got several
letters.' I made up my mind to pay you out, not to
write to you at all but there, God bless you! I am
not so very fond of letters, but when one is travelling
nothing is so bad as uncertainty. How have you
settled the summer villa question? Is the mongoose
alive? And so on and so on.

I have been in St. Peter's, in the Capitol, in the
Coliseum, in the Forum I have even been in a cafe-
chantant, but did not derive from it the gratification
I had expected. The weather is a drawback, it is
raining. I am hot in my autumn overcoat, and cold
in my summer one.

Travelling is very cheap. One may pay a visit to
Italy with only four hundred roubles and go back
with purchases. If I were travelling alone or with
Ivan, I should have brought away the conviction that
travelling in Italy was much cheaper than travelling
in the Caucasus. But alas ! I am with the Suvorins.
... In Venice we lived in the best of hotels like
Doges; here in Rome we live like Cardinals, for we
have taken a salon of what was once the palace of
Cardinal Conti, now the Hotel Minerva; two huge
drawing-rooms, chandeliers, carpets, open fireplaces,
and all sorts of useless rubbish, costing us forty francs
a day.

My back aches, and the soles of my feet burn from
tramping about. It's awful how we walk !

It seems odd to me that Levitan did not like Italy.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 245

It's a fascinating country. If I were a solitary per-
son, an artist, and had money, I should live here in
the winter. You see, Italy, apart from its natural
scenery and warmth, is the one country in which you
feel convinced that art is really supreme over every-
thing, and that conviction gives one courage.

NAPLES,
April 4, 1891.

I arrived in Naples, went to the post-office and
found there five letters from home, for which I am
very grateful to you all. Well done, relations!
Even Vesuvius is so touched it has gone out.

Vesuvius hides its top in clouds and can only be
seen well in the evening. By day the sky is overcast.
We are staying on the sea-front and have a view of
everything: the sea, Vesuvius, Capri, Sorrento. . . .
We drove in the daytime up to the monastery of St.
Martini: the view from here is such as I have never
seen before, a marvellous panorama. I saw some-
thing like it at Hong Kong when I went up the
mountain in the railway.

In Naples there is a magnificent arcade. And the
shops!! The shops make me quite giddy. What
brilliance! You, Masha, and you, Lika, would be
rabid with delight.

* * # * # #

There is a wonderful aquarium in Naples. There
are even sharks and squids. When a squid (an
octopus) devours some animals it's a revolting sight.

I have been to a barber's and watched a young
man having his beard clipped for a whole hour. He
was probably engaged to be married or else a card-

246 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

sharper. At the barber's the ceiling and all the four
walls were made of looking-glass, so that you feel that
you are not at a hairdresser's but at the Vatican where
there are eleven thousand rooms. They cut your hair
wonderfully.

I shan't bring you any presents, as you don't write
to me about the summer villa and the mongoose. I
bought you a watch, Masha, but I have cast it to the
swine. But there, God forgive you!

P. S. I shall be back by Easter, come and meet
me at the station.

NAPLES,
April 7, 1891.

Yesterday I went to Pompeii and went over it. As
you know, it is a Roman town buried under the lava
and ashes of Vesuvius in 79 A.D. I walked about the
streets of the town and saw the houses, the temples,
the theatre, the squares. ... I saw and marvelled
at the faculty of the Romans for combining simplicity
with convenience and beauty. After viewing Pom-
pen, I lunched at a restaurant and then decided to go
to Vesuvius. The excellent red wine I had drunk had
a great deal to do with this decision. I had to ride on
horseback to the foot of Vesuvius. I have in conse-
quence to-day a sensation in some parts of my mortal
frame as though I had been in the Third Division, and
had there been flogged. What an agonising business
it is climbing up Vesuvius! Ashes, mountains of
lava, solid waves of molten minerals, mounds of earth,
and every sort of abomination. You take one step
forward and fall half a step back, the soles of your
feet hurt you, your breathing is oppressed. . . .
You go on and on and on, and it is still a long way to

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 247

the top. You wonder whether to turn back, but you
are ashamed to turn back, you would be laughed at.
The ascent began at half -past two, and ended at six.
The crater of Vesuvius is a great many yards in
diameter. I stood on its edge and looked down as
into a cup. The soil around, covered by a layer of
sulphur, was smoking vigorously. From the crater
rose white stinking smoke; spurts of hot water and
red-hot stones fly out while Satan lies snoring under
cover of the smoke. The noise is rather mixed, you
hear in it the beating of breakers and the roar of
thunder, and the rumble of the railway line and the
falling of planks. It is very terrible, and at the same
time one has an impulse to jump right into the crater.
I believe in hell now. The lava has such a high tem-
perature that copper coins melt in it.

Coming down was as horrid as going up. You
sink up to your knees in ashes. I was fearfully tired.
I went back on horseback through a little village and
by houses; there was a glorious fragrance and the
moon was shining. I sniffed, gazed at the moon, and
thought of her that is, of Lika L.

All the summer, noble gentlemen, we shall have no
money, and the thought of that spoils my appetite.
I have got into debt for a thousand for a tour, which
I could have made solo for three hundred roubles.
All my hopes now are in the fools of amateurs who are
going to act my "Bear."

Have you taken a house for the holidays, signori?
You treat me piggishly, you write nothing to me, and
I don't know what's going on, and how things are at
home.

Humble respects to you all. Take care of your-
selves, and don't completely forget me.

248 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

MONTE CARLO,
April 13, 1891.

I am writing to you from Monte Carlo, from the
very place where they play roulette. I can't tell you
how thrilling the game is. First of all I won eighty
francs, then I lost, then I won again, and in the end
was left with a loss of forty francs. I have twenty
francs left, I shall go and try my luck again. I have
been here since the morning, and it is twelve o'clock
at night. If I had money to spare I believe I should
spend the whole year gambling and walking about the
magnificent halls of the casino. It is interesting to
watch the ladies who lose thousands. This morning
a young lady lost 5000 francs. The tables with piles
of gold are interesting too. In fact it is beyond all
words. This charming Monte Carlo is extremely like
a fine . . . den of thieves. The suicide of losers is
quite a regular thing.

Suvorin fils lost 300 francs.

We shall soon see each other. I am weary of
wandering over the face of the earth. One must
draw the line. My heels are sore as it is.

To HIS BROTHER MIHAIL.

NICE,
Monday in Holy Week, April, 1891.

We are staying in Nice, on the sea-front. The sun
is shining, it is warm, green and fragrant, but windy.
An hour's journey from Nice is the famous Monaco.
There is Monte Carlo, where roulette is played. Im-
agine the rooms of the Hall of Nobility but hand-

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 249

somer, loftier and larger. There are big tables, and
on the tables roulette which I will describe to you
when I get home. The day before yesterday I went
over there, played and lost. The game is fearfully
fascinating. After losing, Suvorin fils and I fell to
thinking it over, and thought out a system which
would ensure one's winning. We went yesterday,
taking five hundred francs each; at the first staking
I won two gold pieces, then again and again; my
waistcoat pockets bulged with gold. I had in hand
French money even of the year 1808, as well as Bel-
gian, Italian, Greek, and Austrian coins. ... I
have never before seen so much gold and silver. I
began playing at five o'clock and by ten I had not a
single franc in my pocket, and the only thing left me
was the satisfaction of knowing that I had my return
ticket to Nice. So there it is, my friends ! You will
say, of course: "What a mean thing to do! We are
so poor, while he out there plays roulette." Per-
fectly just, and I give you permission to slay me. But
I personally am much pleased with myself. Anyway,
now I can tell my grandchildren that I have played
roulette, and know the feeling which is excited by
gambling.

Beside the Casino where roulette is played there is
another swindle the restaurants. They fleece one
frightfully and feed one magnificently. Every dish
is a regular work of art, before which one is expected
to bow one's knee in homage and to be too awe-
stricken to eat it. Every morsel is rigged out with
lots of artichokes, truffles, and nightingales' tongues
of all sorts. And, good Lord! how contemptible and
loathsome this life is with its artichokes, its palms,
and its smell of orange blossoms ! I love wealth and

250 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

luxury, but the luxury here, the luxury of the gam-
bling saloon, reminds one of a luxurious water-closet.
There is something in the atmosphere that offends
one's sense of decency and vulgarizes the scenery, the
sound of the sea, the moon.

Yesterday Sunday I went to the Russian church
here. What was peculiar was the use of palm-
branches instead of willows ; and instead of boy chor-
isters a choir of ladies, which gives the singing an
operatic effect. They put foreign money in the plate ;
the verger and beadle speak French, and so on. ...

Of all the places I have been in hitherto Venice has
left me the loveliest memories. Rome on the whole
is rather like Harkov, and Naples is filthy. And the
sea does not attract me, as I got tired of it last Novem-
ber and December.

I feel as though I have been travelling for a whole
year. I had scarcely got back from Sahalin when I
went to Petersburg, and then to Petersburg again,
and to Italy. . . .

If I don't manage to get home by Easter, when you
break the fast, remember me in your prayers, and
receive my congratulations from a distance, and my
assurance that I shall miss you all horribly on Easter
night.

To HIS SISTER.

PARIS,
April 21, 1891.

To-day is Easter. So Christ is risen! It's my
first Easter away from home.

I arrived in Paris on Friday morning and at once
went to the Exhibition. Yes, the Eiffel Tower is very

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 251

7 high. The other exhibition buildings I saw
ly from the outside, as they were occupied by
fairy brought there in anticipation of disorders.
L Friday they expected riots. The people flocked
crowds about the streets, shouting and whistling,
jatly excited, while the police kept dispersing them.

disperse a big crowd a dozen policemen are suffi-
nt here. The police make a combined attack, and
; crowd runs like mad. In one of these attacks the
nour was vouchsafed to me a policeman caught
Id of me under my shoulder, and pushed me in front
him.

There was a great deal of movement, the streets
re swarming and surging. Noise, hubbub. The
vements are filled with little tables, and at the
)les sit Frenchmen who feel as though they were at
me in the street. A magnificent people. There is

describing Paris, though; I will put off the descrip-
n of it till I get home.

I heard the midnight service in the Church of the
nbassy. . . .

I am afraid you have no money.
Misha, get my pince-nez mended, for the salvation
your soul! I am simply a martyr without spec-
kles. I went to the Salon and couldn't see half the
itures, thanks to my short sight. By the way, the
issian artists are far more serious than the French.
. In comparison with the landscape painters I
w here yesterday Levitan is a king. . . .

252 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

PARIS,
April 24

A change again. One of the Russian sculptors liv-
ing in Pans has undertaken to do a bust of Suvorin,
and this will keep us till Saturday.

. . . How are you managing without money?
Bear it till Thursday.

Imagine my delight. I was in the Chamber of
Deputies just at the time of the sitting when the
Minister for Internal Affairs was called to account for
the irregularities which the government had ventured
upon in putting down the riots in Fourmis (there were
many killed and wounded) . It was a stormy and ex-
tremely interesting sitting.

Men who tie boa-constrictors round their bodies,
ladies who kick up to the ceiling, flying people, lions,
cafe-chantants, dinners and lunches begin to sicken
me. It is time I was home. I am longing to work.

To A. S. SUVORIN.

ALEXIN,
May 7, 1891

The summer villa is all right. There are woods
and the Oka: it is far away in the wilds, it is warm,
nightingales sing, and so on. It is quiet and peace-
ful, and in bad weather it will be dull and depressing
here. After travelling abroad, life at a summer villa
seems a little mawkish. I feel as though I had been
taken prisoner and put into a fortress. But I am con-
tented all the same. In Moscow I received from the
Society of Dramatic Authors not two hundred roubles,
as I expected, but three hundred. It's very kind on
the part of fortune.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 253

ell, my dear sir, I owe you, even if we adopt your
mng, not less than eight hundred roubles. In
or July, when my money will be at the shop, I
vnte to Zandrok to send all that comes to me to
n Feodosia, and do not try and prevent me. I
you my word of honour that when I have paid
ebts and settled with you, I'll accept a loan of
3 from you. Do not imagine that it is dis-
able to me to be in your debt. I lend other
le money, and so I feel I have the right to borrow
:y, but I am afraid of getting into difficulties and
labit of being in debt. You know I owe your
a devilish lot.

lere is a fine view from my window. Trains are
nually passing. There is a bridge across the Oka.

ALEXIN,
May 10, 1891.

js, you are right, my soul needs balsam. I
Id read now with pleasure, even with joy, some-
; serious, not merely about myself but things in
ral. I pine for serious reading, and recent Rus-
criticism does not nourish but simply irritates

I could read with enthusiasm something new
t Pushkin or Tolstoy. That would be balsam
ay idle mind.

am homesick for Venice and Florence too, and
eady to climb Vesuvius again; Bologna has been
ed fiom my memory and grown dim. As for

and Pans, when I recall them "I look on my
,vith loathing."

the last number of The Messenger of Foreign
ature there is a story by Ouida, translated from
English by our Mihail. Why don't I know

254 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

foreign languages ? It seems to me I could translate
magnificently. When I read anyone else's transla-
tion I keep altering and transposing the words in my
train, and the result is something light, ethereal, like
lacework.

On Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays I write
my Sahalin book, on the other days, except Sunday,
my novel, and on Sundays, short stories. I work with
zest. The weather has been superb every day; the
site of our summer villa is dry and healthy. There is
a lot of woodland. There are a lot of fish and cray-
fish in the Oka. I see the trains and the steamers.
Altogether if it were not for being somewhat cramped
I should be very very much pleased with it.

******

I don't intend to get married. I should like to be
a little bald old man sitting at a big table in a fine
study. . . .

ALEXIN,
May 13, 1891.

I am going to write you a Christmas story that's
certain. Two, indeed, if you like. I sit and write
and write . . .; at last I have set to work. I am
only sorry that my cursed teeth are aching and my
stomach is out of order.

I am a dilatory but productive author. By the
time I am forty I shall have hundreds of volumes,
so that I can open a bookshop with nothing but my
own works. To have a lot of books and to have
nothing else is a horrible disgrace.

My dear friend, haven't you in your library
Tagantsev's "Criminal Law" ? If you have, couldn't
you send it me? I would buy it, but I am now

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 255

"a poor relation" a beggar and as poor as Sidor's
goat. Would you telephone to your shop, too, to
send me, on account of favours to come, two books :
"The Laws relating to Exiles," and "The Laws re-
lating to Persons under Police Control." Don't im-
agine that I want to become a procurator; I want
these works for my Sahalin book. I am going to
diiect my attack chiefly against life sentences, in
which I see the root of all the evils ; and against the
laws dealing with exiles, which are fearfully out of
date and contradictory.

To L. S. MIZINOV.

ALEXIN,
May 17, 1891.

Golden, mother-of-pearl, and fil d'Ecosse Lika!
The mongoose ran away the day before yesterday,
and will never come back again. It is dead. That
is the first thing.

The second thing is, that we are moving our resi-
dence to the upper storey of the house of B. K. the
man who gave you milk to drink and forgot to give you
strawberries. We will let you know the day we move
in due time. Come to smell the flowers, to walk, to
fish, and to blubber. Ah, lovely Lika! When you
bedewed my right shoulder with your tears (I have
taken out the spots with benzine), and when slice
after slice you ate our bread and meat, we greedily
devoured your face and head with our eyes. Ah,
Lika, Lika, diabolical beauty! . . .

When you are at the Alhambra with Trofimov I
hope you may accidentally jab out his eye with your
fork.

256 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

To A. S. SUVORIN.

ALEXIN,
May 18, 1891

... I get up at five o'clock in the morning; evi-
dently when I am old I shall get up at four. My
forefathers all got up very early, before the cock.
And I notice people who get up very early are horribly
fussy. So I suppose I shall be a fussy, restless old
man. . . .

BOGIMOVO,

May 20

. . . The carp bite capitally. I forgot all my sor-
rows yesterday; first I sat by the pond and caught
carp, and then by the old mill and caught perch.

. . . The last two proclamations about the
Siberian railway and the exiles pleased me very
much. The Siberian railway is called a national con-
cern, and the tone of the proclamation guarantees
its speedy completion; and convicts who have com-
pleted such and such terms as settlers are allowed
to return to Russia without the right to live in the
provinces of Petersburg and Moscow. The news-
papers have let this pass unnoticed, and yet it is
something which has never been in Russia before it
is the first step towards abolishing the life sentence
which has so long weighed on the public conscience
as unjust and cruel in the extreme. . . .

BOGIMOVO,
May 27, 4 o'clock in the Morning

The mongoose has run away into the woods and
has not come back. It is cold I have no money.
But nevertheless, I don't envy you. One cannot live
in town now, it is both dreary and unwholesome. I

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 257

should like you to be sitting from morning till din-
ner-time in this verandah, drinking tea and writing
something artistic, a play or something; and after
dinner till evening, fishing and thinking peaceful
thoughts. You have long ago earned the right which
is denied you now by all sorts of chance circum-
stances, and it seems to me shameful and unjust that
1 should live more peacefully than you. Is it pos-
sible that you will stay all June in town? It's really
terrible. . . .

... By the way, read Grigorovitch's letter to
my enemy Anna Ivanovna. Let her soul rejoice.
"Chekhov belongs to the generation which has
perceptibly begun to turn away from the West and
concentrate more closely on their own world. . . ."
"Venice and Florence are nothing else than dull
towns for a man of any intelligence. . . ." Merci,
but I don't understand persons of such intelligence.
One would have to be a bull to "turn away from
the West" on arriving for the first time in Venice or
Florence. There is very little intelligence in doing
so. But I should like to know who is taking the
trouble to announce to the whole universe that I did
not like foreign parts. Good Lord ! I never let drop
one word about it. I liked even Bologna. What-
ever ought I to have done? Howled with rapture?
Broken the windows? Embraced Frenchmen? Do
they say I gained no ideas? But I fancy I
did. . . .

We must see each other or more correctly, I must
see you. I am missing you already, although to-day
I caught two hundred and fifty-two carp and one
crayfish.

253 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

BOGIMOVO,

June 4, 1891.

Why did you go away so soon? I was very dull,
and could not get back into my usual petty routine
very quickly afterwards. As luck would have it,
after you went away the weather became warm and
magnificent, and the fish began to bite.

. . . The mongoose has been found. A sports-
man with dogs found him on this side of the Oka in
a quarry; if there had not been a crevice in the quarry
the dogs would have torn the mongoose to pieces.
It had been astray in the woods for eighteen days.
In spite of the climatic conditions, which are awful
for it, it had grown fat such is the effect of freedom.
Yes, my dear sir, freedom is a grand thing.

I advise you again to go to Feodosia by the Volga.
Anna Ivanovna and you will enjoy it, and it will be
new and interesting for the children. If I were free
I would come with you. It's snug now on those
Volga steamers, they feed you well and the passengers
are interesting.

Forgive me for your having been so uncomfortable
with us. When I am grown up and order furniture
from Venice, as I certainly shall do, you won't have
such a cold and rough time with me.

To L. S. MIZINOV.

BOGIMOVO,

June 12, 1891.

Enchanting, amazing Lika!
Captivated by the Circassian Levitan, you have
completely forgotten that you promised my brother

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 259

Ivan you would come on the 1st of June, and you
do not answer my sister's letter at all. I wrote to
you from Moscow to invite you, but my letter, too,
remained a voice crying in the wilderness. Though
you are received in aristocratic society, you have been
badly brought up all the same, and I don't regret hav-
ing once chastised you with a switch. You must un-
derstand that expecting your arrival from day to day
not only wearies us, but puts us to expense. In an
ordinary way we only have for dinner what is left of
yesterday's soup, but when we expect visitors we have
also a dish of boiled beef, which we buy from the
neighbouring cooks.

We have a magnificent garden, dark avenues, snug
corners, a river, a mill, a boat, moonlight, nightin-
gales, turkeys. In the pond and river there are very
intelligent frogs. We often go for walks, during
which I usually close my eyes and crook my right arm
in the shape of a bread-ring, imagining that you are
walking by my side.

. . . Give my greetings to Levitan. Please ask
him not to write about you in every letter. In the
first place it is not magnanimous on his part, and
in the second, I have no interest whatever in his
happiness.

Be well and happy and don't forget us. I have
just received your letter, it is filled from top to bot-
tom with such charming expressions as: "The devil
choke you ! " "The devil flay you ! " "Anathema ! "
"A good smack," "rabble," "overeaten myself."
Your friends such as Trophim with their cab-
men's talk certainly have an improving influence on
you.

You may bathe and go for evening walks. That's

260 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

all nonsense. All my inside is full of coughs, wet
and dry, but I bathe and walk about, and yet I am
alive. . . .

To L. S. MIZINOV.

(Enclosing a photograph of a young man inscribed
"To Lida from Petya ")

PRECIOUS LIDA!

Why these reproaches ! I send you my por-
trait. To-morrow we shall meet. Do not forget
your Petya. A thousand kisses ! ! !

I have bought Chekhov's stories. How delightful !
Mind you buy them. Remember me to Masha
Chekhov. What a darling you are!

To THE SAME.

MY DEAR LIDIA STAHIEVNA,

I love you passionately like a tiger, and I offer
you my hand.

Marshal of Nobility,
GOLOVIN RTISHTCHEV.

P. S. Answer me by signs. You do squint.
To HIS SISTER.

BOGIMOVO,

June, 1891.

Masha! Make haste and come home, as without
you our intensive culture is going to complete ruin.
There is nothing to eat, the flies are sickening. The

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 261

mongoose has broken a jar of jam, and so on, and so
on.

All the summer visitors sigh and lament over your
absence. There is no news. . . . The spiderman
is busy from morning to night with his spiders. He
has already described five of the spider's legs, and
has only three left to do. When he has finished with
spiders he will begin upon fleas, which he will catch
on his aunt. The K.s sit every evening at the club,
and no hints from me will prevail on them to move
from the spot.

It is hot, there are no mushrooms. Suvorin has
not come yet. . . .

Come soon for it is devilishly dull. We have just
caught a frog and given it to the mongoose. It has
eaten it.

To MADAME KISELYOV.

ALEXIN,
July 20, 1891

Greetings, honoured Marya Vladimirovna.

For God's sake write what you are doing, whether
you are all well and how things are in regard to mush-
rooms and gudgeon.

We are living at Bogimovo in the province of
Kaluga. . . . It's a huge house, a fine park, the
inevitable views, at the sight of which I am for some
leason expected to say "Ach!" A river, a pond
with hungry carp who love to get on to the hook, a
mass of sick people, a smell of iodoform, and walks
in the evenings. I am busy with my Sahalin; and
in the intervals, that I may not let my family starve,
I cherish the muse and write stories. Everything

262 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

goes on in the old way, there is nothing new. I get
up every day at five o'clock, and prepare my coffee
with my own hands a sign that I have already got
into old bachelor habits and am resigned to them.
Masha is painting, Misha wears his cockade credita-
bly, father talks about bishops, mother bustles about
the house, Ivan fishes. On the same estate with us
there is" living a zoologist called Wagner and his
family, and some Kisilyovs not the Kisilyovs, but
others, not the real ones.

Wagner catches ladybirds and spiders, and Kisilyov
the father sketches, as he is an artist. We get up
performances, tableaux-vivants, and picnics. It is
very gay and amusing, but I have only to catch a
perch or find a mushroom for my head to droop, and
my thoughts to be carried back to the past, and my
brain and soul begin in a funereal voice to sing the
duet "We are parted." The "deposed idol and the
deserted temple" rise up before my imagination, and
I think devoutly: "I would exchange all the zoolo-
gists and great artists in the world for one little
Idiotik." * The weather has all the while been hot
and dry, and only to-day there has been a crash of
thunder and the gates of heaven are open. One longs
to get away somewhere for instance, to America, or
Norway. ... Be well and happy, and may the
good spirits, of whom there are so many at Babkino,
have you in their keeping.

* Madame Kisilyov's son.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 263

To HIS BROTHER ALEXANDR.

ALEXIN,
July, 1891.

MY PHOTOGRAPHIC AND PROLIFIC BROTHER!

I got a letter from you a long time ago with
the photographs of Semashko, but I haven't answered
till now, because I have been all the time trying to
formulate the great thoughts befitting my answer.
All our people are alive and well, we often talk of
you, and regret that your prolificness prevents you
from coming to us here where you would be very
welcome. Father, as I have written to you already,
has thrown up Ivanygortch, and is living with us.
Suvorin has been here twice; he talked about you,
and caught fish. I am up to my neck in work with
Sahalin, and other things no less wearisome and hard
labour. I dream of winning forty thousand, so as
to cut myself off completely from writing, which I
am sick of, to buy a little bit of land and live like
a hermit in idle seclusion, with you and Ivan in the
neighbourhood I dream of presenting you with
fifteen acres each as poor relations. Altogether I
have a dreary existence, I am sick of toiling over
lines and halfpence, and old age is creeping nearer
and nearer.

Your last story, in my opinion, shared by Suvorin,
is good. Why do you write so little?

The zoologist V. A. Wagner, who took his degree
with you, is staying in the same courtyard. He is
writing a very solid dissertation. Kisilyov, the artist,
is living in the same yard too. We go walks to-
gether in the evenings and discuss philosophy. . . .

264 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

To A. S. SUVORIN.

BOGIMOVO,

July 24, 1891.

. . . Thanks for the five kopecks addition. Alas y
it will not settle my difficulties! To save up a re-
serve, as you write, and extricate myself from the
abyss of halfpenny anxieties and petty terrors, there
is only one resource left me an immoral one. To
marry a rich woman or give out Anna Karenin as my
work. And as that is impossible I dismiss my diffi-
culties in despair and let things go as they please.

You once praised Rod, a French writer, and told
me Tolstoy liked him. The other day I happened to
read a novel of his and flung up my hands in amaze-
ment. He is equivalent to our Matchtet, only a lit-
tle more intelligent. There is a terrible deal of af-
fectation, dreariness, stiaming after originality, and
as little of anything artistic as there was salt in that
porridge we cooked in the evening at Bogimovo. In
the preface this Rod regrets that he was in the past
a "naturalist," and rejoices that the spiritualism of
the latest recruits of literature has replaced material-
ism. Boyish boastfulness which is at the same time
coarse and clumsy. . . . "If we are not as talented
as you, Monsieur Zola, to make up for it we believe
in God." . . .

July 29

Well, thank God! To-day I have received from
the bookshop notice that there is 690 roubles
6 kopecks coming to me I have written in answer
that they are to send five hundred roubles to Feo-
dosia and the other one hundred and ninety to me.
And so I am left owing you only one hundred and

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 265

seventy. That is comforting, it's an advance any-
way. To meet the debt to the newspaper I am arm-
ing myself with an immense story which I shall finish
in a day or two and send. I ought to knock three
hundred roubles off the debt, and get as much for
myself. Ough! . . .

August 6,

. . . The death of a servant in the house makes
a strange impression, doesn't it? The man while he
was alive attracted attention only so far as he was
one's "man"; but when he is dead he suddenly en-
grosses the attention of all, lies like a weight on the
whole house, and becomes the despotic master who is
talked of to the exclusion of everything.

... I shall finish my story to-morrow or the day
after, but not to-day, for it has exhausted me fiend-
ishly towards the end. Thanks to the haste with
which I have worked at it, I have wasted a pound
of nerves over it. The composition of it is a little
complicated. I got into difficulties and often tore up
what I had written, and for days at a time was dis-
satisfied with my work that is why I have not fin-
ished it till now. How awful it is ! I must rewrite
it! It's impossible to leave it, for it is in a devil of
a mess. My God! if the public likes my works as
little as I do those of other people which I am reading,
what an ass I am ! There is something asinine about
our writing. . . .

To my great pleasure the amazing astronomer has
ai rived. She is angry with you, and calls you for
some reason an "eloquent gossip." To begin with,
she is free and independent; and then she has a poor
opinion of men ; and further, according to her, every-
one is a savage or a ninny and you dared to give

266 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

her my address with the words "the being you adore
lives at . . . ," and so on. Upon my word, as
though one could suspect earthly feelings in astron-
omers who soar among the clouds ! She talks and
laughs all day, is a capital mushroom- gatherer, and
dreams of the Caucasus to which she is departing to-
day.

August 18.

At last I have finished my long, wearisome story*
and am sending it to you in Feodosia. Please read
it. It is too long for the paper, and not suitable for
dividing into parts. Do as you think best, how-
ever. . . .

There are more than four signatures of print in the
story. It's awful. I am exhausted, and dragged the
end, like a train of waggons on a muddy night in
autumn, at a walking pace with halts that is why
I am late with it. ...

August 18.

Speaking of Nikolay and the doctor who attends
him, you emphasize that "all that is done without
love, without self-sacrifice, even in regard to trifling
conveniences." You are right, speaking of people
generally, but what would you have the doctors do?
If, as your old nurse says, "The bowel has burst,"
what's one to do, even if one is ready to give one's
life to the sufferer? As a rule, while the family, the
relations, and the servants are doing "everything they
can" and are straining every nerve, the doctor sits
and looks like a fool, with his hands folded, discon-
solately ashamed of himself and his science, and try-
ing to preserve external tranquillity. . . .

* "The Duel."

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 267

Doctors have loathsome days and hours, such as

would not wish my worst enemy. It is true that
gnoramuses and coarse louts are no rarity among
lectors, nor are they among writers, engineers, peo-
le in general; but those loathsome days and hours
if which I speak fall to the lot of doctors only, and
or that, truly, much may be forgiven them. . . .

The amazing astronomer is at Batum now. As
told her I should go to Batum too, she will send her
ddress to Feodosia. She has grown cleverer than
ver of late. One day I overheard a learned discus-
ion between her and the zoologist Wagner, whom
r ou know. It seemed to me that in comparison with
icr the learned professor was simply a schoolboy.
?he has excellent logic and plenty of good common
,ense, but no rudder, ... so that she drifts and
liifts, and doesn't know where she is going. . . .

A woman was carting rye, and she fell off the wag-
jon head downwards. She was terribly injured:
:oncussion of the brain, straining of the vertebrae of
he neck, sickness, fearful pains, and so on. She
vas brought to me. She was moaning and groaning
md praying for death, and yet she looked at the man
vho brought her and muttered: "Let the lentils go,
Cirila, you can thresh them later, but thresh the oats

low." I told her that she could talk about oats

f

ifterwards, that there was something more serious
o talk about, but she said to me: "His oats are ever
>o good!" A managing, vigilant woman. Death
jomes easy to such people. . . .

August 28.

I send you Mihailovsky's article on Tolstoy. Read
it and grow perfect. It's a good article, but it's
strange; one might write a thousand such articles and

268 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

things would not be one step forwarder, and it would
still remain unintelligible why such articles are writ-
ten. . . .

I am writing my Sahalin, and I am bored, I am
bored. ... I am utterly sick of life.

Judging from your telegram I have not satisfied
you with my story. You should not have hesitated
to send it back to me.

Oh, how weary I am of sick people ! A neighbour-
ing landowner had a nervous stroke and they trundled
me off to him in a scurvy jolting britchka. Most of
all I am sick of peasant women with babies, and of
powders which it is so tedious to weigh out.

There is a famine year coming. I suppose there
will be epidemics of all sorts and risings on a small

scale. . . .

August 28

So you like my story?* Well, thank God! Of
late I have become devilishly suspicious and uneasy.
I am constantly fancying that my trousers are horrid,
and that I am writing not as I want to, and that I
am giving my patients the wrong powders. It must
be a special neurosis.

If Ladzievsky's surname is really horrible, you can
call him something else. Let him be Lagievsky, let
von Koren remain von Koren. The multitude of
Wagners, Brandts, and so on, in all the scientific
world, make a Russian name out of the question for
a zoologist though there is Kovalevsky. And by
the way, Russian life is so mixed up nowadays that
any surnames will do.

Sahalin is progressing. There are times when I
long to sit over it from three to five years, and work
* "The Duel."

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 269

t it furiously; but at times, in moments of doubt, I
Duld spit on it. It would be a good thing, by God!
> devote three years to it. I shall write a great
eal of rubbish, because I am not a specialist, but
3ally I shall write something sensible too. It is such

good subject, because it would live for a hundred
ears after me, as it would be the literary source and
id for all who are studying prison organization, or
re interested in it.

You are right, your Excellency, I have done a
reat deal this summer. Another such summer and

may perhaps have written a novel and bought an
state. I have not only paid my way, but even paid
ff a thousand roubles of debt.

. . . Tell your son that I envy him. And I envy
ou too, and not because your wives have gone away,
ut because you are bathing in the sea and living m

warm house. I am cold in my barn. I should like
iew carpets, an open fireplace, bronzes, and learned
onversations. Alas! I shall never be a Tolstoyan.
n women I love beauty above all things ; and in the
ustory of mankind, culture, expressed in carpets,
arriages with springs, and keenness of wit. Ach!
r*o make haste and become an old man and sit at a
iig table! . . .

p. g i If we were to cut the zoological conversa-
ions out of "The Duel" wouldn't it make it more

iving :

Moscow,

September 8.

I have returned to Moscow and am keeping in-
loors. My family is busy trying to find a new flat,
mt I say nothing because I am too lazy to turn round

270 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

They want to move to Devitchye Polye for the sake o j
cheapness.

The title you recommend for my novel "Decep
tion" will not do: it would only he appropriate ij
it were a question of conscious lying. Unconscious
lying is not deception but a mistake. Tolstoy ca[ s
our having money and eating meat lying that's toe
much. . . .

Death gathers men little by little, he knows what
he is about. One might write a play: an old chemist
invents the elixir of life take fifteen drops and you
live for ever; but he breaks the phial from terror, lest
such carrion as himself and his wife might live foi
ever. Tolstoy denies mankind immortality, but may
God ! how much that is personal there is in it ! The
day before yesterday I read his "Afterword."
Strike me dead! but it is stupider and stuffier than
^'Letters to a Governor's Wife," which I despise.
The devil take the philosophy of the great ones of
this world! All the great sages are as despotic
as generals, and as ignorant and as indelicate as gen-
erals, because they feel secure of impunity. Diog-
enes spat in people's faces, knowing that he would
not suffer for it. Tolstoy abuses doctors as
scoundrels, and displays his ignorance in great
questions because he's just such a Diogenes who
won't be locked up or abused in the newspapers.
And so to the devil with the philosophy of all the
great ones of this world! The whole of it with its
fanatical "Afterwords" and "Letters to a Governor's
Wife" is not worth one little mare in his "Story of
a Horse. ..."

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 271

To E. M. S.

Moscow,
September 16.

So we old bachelors smell of dogs ? So be it. But
for specialists in feminine diseases being at heart
kes and cynics, allow me to differ. Gynaecologists-
ive to do with deadly prose such as you have never
earned of, and to which perhaps, if you knew it,
>u would, with the ferocity characteristic of your
lagination, attribute a worse smell than that of
>gs. One who is always swimming in the sea loves
y land; one who for ever is plunged in prose
issionately longs for poetry. All gynaecologists
e idealists. Your doctor reads poems, your instinct
rompted you right; I would add that he is a great
beral, a bit of a mystic, and that he dreams of a
ife in the style of the Nekrassov Russian woman,
he famous Snyegirev cannot speak of the "Russian-
oman" without a quiver in his voice. Another
^naecologist whom I know is in love with a
ivsterious lady in a veil whom he has only seen from
distance. Another one goes to all the first per-
>rmances at the theatre and then is loud in his
3use, declaring that authors ought to represent
ily ideal women, and so on. You have omitted to
)nsider also that a good gynaecologist cannot be a
upid man or a mediocrity. Intellect has a brighter
istre than baldness, but you have noticed the bald-
ess and emphasized it and have flung the intellect
irerboard. You have noticed, too, and emphasized
lat a fat man brrr! exudes a sort of greasiness,
ut you completely lose sight of the fact that he is a
rofessor that is, that he has spent several years in

272 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

thinking and doing something which sets him high
above millions of men, high above all the Verotchkas
and Taganrog Greek girls, high above dinners and
wines of all sorts. Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham,
and Japheth. Ham only noticed that his father was
a drunkard, and completely lost sight of the fact that
he was a genius, that he had built an ark and saved
the world.

Writers must not imitate Ham, bear that in mind.

I do not venture to ask you to love the gynaecolo-
gist and the professor, but I venture to remind you
of the justice which for an objective writer is more
precious than the air he breathes.

The girl of the merchant class is admirably drawn.
That is a good passage in the doctor's speech in
which he speaks of his lack of faith in medicine, but
there is no need to make him drink after every sen-
tence. . . .

Then from the particular to the general! Let
me warn you. This is not a story and not a novel
and not a work of art, but a long row of heavy,
gloomy barrack buildings. Where is your construc-
tion which at first so enchanted your humble servant?
Where is the lightness, the freshness, the grace?
Head your story through: a description of a dinner,
then a descnption of passing ladies and girls, then
,a description of a company, then a description of a
dmner, . . . and so on endlessly. Descriptions
and descriptions and no action at all. You ought to
begin straight away with the merchant's daughter,
and keep to her, and chuck out Verotchka and the
Greek girls and all the rest, except the doctor and
the merchant family.

Excuse this long letter.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 273

To A. S. SUVORIN.

Moscow,
October 16, 1891.

I congratulate you on your new cook, and wish you
an excellent appetite. Wish me the same, for I am
coming to see you soon sooner than I had intended
and shall eat for three. I simply must get away
from home, if only for a fortnight. From morning
till night I am unpleasantly irritable, I feel as though
someone were drawing a blunt knife over my soul,
and this irritability finds external expression in my
hurrying off to bed early and avoiding conversation.
Nothing I do succeeds. I began a story for the
Sbomik; I wrote half and threw it up, and then be-
gan another; I have been struggling for more than
a week with this story, and the time when I shall
finish it and when I shall set to work and finish the
first story, for which I am to be paid, seems to me far
away. I have not been to the province of Nizhni
Novgorod yet, for reasons not under my control, and
1 don't know when I shall go. In fact it's a hopeless
mess a silly muddle and not life. And I desire
nothing now so much as to win two hundred thou-
sand. . . .

Ah, I have such a subject for a novel ! If I were
in a tolerable humour I could begin it on the first of
November and finish it on the first of December. I
would make five signatures of print. And I long
to write as I did at Bogimovo i.e., from morning
till night and in my sleep.

Don't tell anyone I am coming to Petersburg. I
shall live incognito. In my letters I write vaguely
that I am coming in November. . . .

Shall I remind you of Kashtanka, or forget about

274 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

her? Won't she lose her childhood and youth if we
don't print her? However, you know best. . . .

P. S. If you see my brother Alexandr, tell him
that our aunt is dying of consumption. Her days
are numbered. She was a splendid woman, a saint.

If you want to visit the famine-stricken provinces,
let us go together in January, it will be more con-
spicuous then. . . .

Moscow,
October 19, 1891.

What a splendid little letter has come from you!
It is warmly and eloquently written, and every
thought in it is true. To talk now of laziness and
drunkenness, and so on, is as strange and tactless as to
lecture a man on the conduct of life at a moment
when he is being sick or lying ill of typhus. There
is always a certain element of insolence in being
well-fed, as in every kind of force, and that element
finds expression chiefly in the well-fed man preaching
to the hungry. If consolation is revolting at a time
of real sorrow, what must be the effect of preaching
morality; and how stupid and insulting that preaching
must seem. These moral people imagine that if a
man is fifteen roubles in arrears with his taxes he
must be a wastrel, and ought not to drink; but they
ought to reckon up how much states are in debt,
and prime ministers, and what the debts of all the
marshals of nobility and all the bishops taken to-
gether come to. What do the Guards owe! Only
their tailors could tell us that. . . .

You have told them to send me four hundred?
Vivat dominus Suvorin! So I have already received
from your firm 400 + 100 + 400. Altogether I

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 275

shall get for "The Duel," as I calculated, about four-
teen hundred, so five hundred will go towards my
debt. Well, and for that thank God I By the spring
I must pay off all my debt or I shall go into a decline,
for in the spring I want another advance from all
my editors. I shall take it and escape to Java. . . .

Ah, my friends, how bored I am ! If I am a doctor
I ought to have patients and a hospital; if I am a
literary man I ought to live among people instead
of in a flat with a mongoose, I ought to have at least
a scrap of social and political life but this life be-
tween four walls, without nature, without people,
without a country, without health and appetite, is not
life, but some sort of ... and nothing more.

For the sake of all the perch and pike you are going
to catch on your Zaraish estate, I entreat you to pub-
lish the English humorist Bernard.* . . .

To MADAME LINTVARYOV.

Moscow,
October 25, 1891.

HONOURED NATALYA MIHAILOVNA,

I have not gone to Nizhni as I meant to, but am
sitting at home, writing and sneezing. Madame
Morozov has seen the Minister, he has absolutely
prohibited private initiative in the work of famine
relief, and actually waved her out of his presence.
This has reduced me to apathy at once. Add to
that, complete lack of money, sneezing, a mass of
work, the illness of my aunt who died to-day, the
indefiniteness, the uncertainty in fact everything
has come together to hinder a lazy person like me.

* 9 Bernard Shaw Translator's Note

276 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

I have put off my going away till the first of
December.

We felt dull without you for a long time, and when
the Shah of Persia* went away it was duller still.
I have given orders that no one is to be admitted,
and sit in my room like a heron in the reeds ; I see no
one, and no one sees me. And it is better so, or the
public would pull the bell off, and my study would
be turned into a smoking and talking room. It's
dull to live like this, but what am I to do? I shall
wait till the summer and then let myself go.

I shall sell the mongoose by auction. I should be
glad to sell N. and his poems too, but no one would
buy him. He dashes in to see me almost every evening
as he used to do, and bores me with his doubts, his
struggles, his volcanoes, slit nostrils, atamans, the life
of the free, and such tosh, for which God forgive him.

Russkiya Vyedomosti is printing a Sbormk for the
famine fund. With your permission, I shall send you
a copy.

Well, good health and happiness to you; respects
and greetings to all yours from

the Geographer,

A. CHEKHOV.

P. S. All my family send their regards.

We are all well but sorrowful. Our aunt was a
general favourite, and was considered among us the
incarnation of goodness, kindness, and justice, if
only all that can be incarnated. Of course we shall
all die, but still it is sad.

In April I shall be in your parts. By the spring
I hope I shall have heaps of money. I judge by the
omen: no money is a sign of money coming.
* A. I. Smagin.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 277

To A. S. SUVORIN.

Moscow,
October 25, 1891.

Print "The Duel" not twice a week but only once.
To print it twice is breaking a long- established custom
of the paper, and it would seem as though I were
robbing the other contributors of one day a week;
and meanwhile it makes no difference to me or my
novel whether it is printed once a week or twice.
The literary brotherhood in Petersburg seems to talk
of nothing but the uncleanness of my motives. I
have just received the good news that I am to be mar-
ried to the rich Madame Sibiryakov. I get a lot of
agreeable news altogether.

I wake up every night and read "War and Peace."
One reads it with the same interest and naive wonder
as though one had never read it before. It's
amazingly good. Only I don't like the passages in
which Napoleon appears. As soon as Napoleon
comes on the scene there are forced explanations and
tricks of all sorts to prove that he was stupider than
he really was. Everything that is said and done by
Pierre, Prince Andrey, or the absolutely insignificant
Nikolay Rostov all that is good, clever, natural, and
touching; everything that is thought and done by
Napoleon is not natural, not clever, inflated and
worthless.

When I live in the provinces (of which I dream
now day and night) , I shall practice as a doctor and
read novels.

I am not coming to Petersburg.

If I had been by Prince Andrey I should have saved
him. It is strange to read that the wound of a

278 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

prince, a rich man spending his days and nights with
a doctor and being nursed by Natasha and Sonya,
should have smelt like a corpse. What a scurvy
affair medicine was in those days! Tolstoy could
not help getting soaked through with hatred for
medicine while he was writing his thick novel. . . .

Moscow,
November 18, 1891.

... I have read your letter about the influenza
and Solovyov. I was unexpectedly aware of a dash
of cruelty in it. The phrase "I hate" does not suit
you at all; and a public confession "I am a sinner,
a sinner, a sinner," is such pride that it made me
feel uncomfortable. When the pope took the title
"holiness," the head of the Eastern church, in pique,
called himself "The servant of God's servants." So
you publicly expatiate on your sinfulness from pique
of Solovyov, who has the impudence to call himself
orthodox. But does a word like orthodoxy, Judaism,
or Catholicism contain any implication of exceptional
personal merit or virtue? To my thinking every-
body is bound to call himself orthodox if he has that
word inscribed on his passport. Whether you be-
lieve or not, whether you are a prince of this world
or an exile in penal servitude, you are, for practical
purposes, orthodox. And Solovyov made no sort of
pretension when he said he was no Jew or Chaldean
but orthodox. . . .

I still feel dull, blighted, foolish, and indifferent,
and I am still sneezing and coughing, and I am
beginning to think I shall not get back to my former
health. But that's all in God"s hands. Medical
treatment and anxiety about one's physical existence

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 279

arouse in me a feeling not far from loathing. I am
not going to be doctored. I will take water and
quinine, but I am not going to let myself be
sounded. . . .

I had only just finished this letter when I received
yours. You say that if I go into the wilds I shall
be quite cut off from you. But I am going to live
in the country in order to be nearer Petersburg. If
I have no flat in Moscow you must understand, my
dear sir, I shall spend November, December, and
January in Petersburg: that will be possible then.
I shall be able to be idle all the summer too ; I shall
look out for a house in the country for you, but you
are wrong in disliking Little Russians, they are not
children or actors in the province of Poltava, but
genuine people, and cheerful and well-fed into the
bargain.

Do you know what relieves my cough? When I
am working I sprinkle the edge of the table with
turpentine with a sprayer and inhale its vapour.
When I go to bed I spray my little table and other
objects near me. The fine drops evaporate sooner
than the liquid itself. And the smell of turpentine
is pleasant. I drink Obersalzbrunnen, avoid hot
things, talk little, and blame myself for smoking so
much. I repeat, dress as warmly as possible, even
at home. Avoid draughts at the theatre. Treat
yourself like a hothouse plant or you will not soon
be rid of your cough. If you want to try turpentine,
buy the French kind. Take quinine once a day, and
be careful to avoid constipation. Influenza has
completely taken away from me any desire to drink
spirituous liquors. They are disgusting to my taste.
I don't drink my two glasses at night, and so it is a

280 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

long time before I can get to sleep. I want to take
ether.

I await your story. In the summer let us each
write a play. Yes, by God! why the devil should
we waste our time. . . .

To E. M. S.

Moscow,
November 19, 1891.

HONOURED ELENA MIHAILOVNA,

I am at home to all commencing, continuing, and
concluding authors that is my rule, and apart from
your authorship and mine, I regard a visit from you
as a great honour to me. Even if it were not so, even
if for some reason I did not desire your visit, even
then I should have received you, as I have enjoyed
the greatest hospitality from your family. I did not
receive you, and at once asked my brother to go to
you and explain the cause. At the moment your card
was handed me I was ill and undressed forgive these
homely details I was in my bedroom, while there
were persons in my study whose presence would not
have been welcome to you. And so to see you was
physically impossible, and this my brother was to
have explained to you, and you, a decent and good-
hearted person, ought to have understood it; but you
were offended. Well, I can't help it. ...

But can you really have written only fifteen
stories ? at this rate you won't learn to write till
you are fifty.

I am in bad health ; for over a month I have had
to keep indoors influenza and cough.

All good wishes.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 281

Write another twenty stories and send them. I
shall always read them with pleasure, and practice
is essential for you.

To A. S. SUVORIN.

Moscow,
November 22, 1891.

My health is on the road to improvement. My
cough is less, my strength is greater. My mood is
livelier, and there is sunrise in my head. I wake up
in the morning in good spirits, go to bed without
gloomy thoughts, and at dinner I am not ill-humoured
and don't say nasty things to my mother.

I don't know when I shall come to you. I have
heaps of work pour manger. Till the spring I must
work that is, at senseless grind. A ray of liberty
has beamed upon my horizon. There has come a
whiff of freedom. Yesterday I got a letter from the
province of Poltava. They write they have found
me a suitable place. A brick house of seven rooms
with an iron roof, lately built and needing no repairs,
a stable, a cellar, an icehouse, eighteen acres of land,
an excellent meadow for hay, an old shady garden on
the bank of the river Psyol. The river bank is mine ;
on that side there is a marvellous view over a wide
expanse. The price is merciful. Three thousand,
and two thousand deferred payment over several
years. Five in all. If heaven has mercy upon nie,
and the purchase comes off, I shall move there in
March for goody to live quietly in the lap of nature for
nine months and the rest of the year in Petersburg.
I am sending my sister to look at the place.

Ach! liberty, liberty! If I can live on not more

282 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

than two thousand a year, which is only possible
in the country, I shall be absolutely free from all
anxieties over money coming in and going out. Then
I shall work and read, read ... in a word it will be
marmelad.* . . .

Moscow,
November 30, 1891.

I return you the two manuscripts you sent me.
One story is an Indian Legend The Lotus Flower,
Wreaths of Laurel, A Summer Night, The Humming
Bird that in India! He begins with Faust thirst-
ing for youth and ends with "the bliss of the true
life," in the style of Tolstoy. I have cut out parts,
polished it up, and the result is a legend of no great
value, indeed, but light, and it may be read with
interest. The other story is illiterate, clumsy, and
womanish in structure, but there is a story and a
certain racmess. I have cut it down to half as you
see. Both stories could be printed. . . .

I keep dreaming and dreaming. I dream of mov-
ing from Moscow into the country in March, and in
the autumn coming to Petersburg to stay till the
spring. I long to spend at least one winter in Peters-
burg, and that's only possible on condition I have no
perch in Moscow. And I dream of how I shall spend
five months talking to you about literature, and do as
I think best in the Novoye Vremya, while in the coun-
try I shall go in for medicine heart and soul.

Boborykin has been to see me. He is dreaming
too. He told me that he wants to write something
in the way of the physiology of the Russian novel, its
origin among us, and the natural course of its develop-

* A kind of sweetmeat made by boiling down fruit to the con-
sistency of damson cheese. Translator's Note,

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 283

lent. While he was talking I could not get rid of
ie feeling that I had a maniac before me, but a
iterary maniac who put literature far above every-
tiing in life. I so rarely see genuine literary people
t home in Moscow that a conversation with Bobory-
in seemed like heavenly manna, though I don't
'elieve in the physiology of the novel and the natural
ourse of its development that is, there may exist
uch a physiology in nature, but I don't believe with
xisting methods it can be detected. Boborykin
ismisses Gogol absolutely and refuses to recognize
im as a forerunner of Turgenev, Gontcharov, and
\>lstoy. . . . He puts him apart, outside the cur-
ent in which the Russian novel has flowed. Well,
don't understand that. If one takes the standpoint
f natural development, it's impossible to put not only
rogol, but even a dog barking, outside the current,
or all things in nature influence one another, and
ven the fact that I have just sneezed is not without
ts influence on surrounding nature. . . .

Good health to you! I am reading Shtchedrin's
'Diary of a Provincial." How long and boring it
3 ! And at the same time how like real life !

To N. A. LEIKIN.

Moscow,
December 2, 1891.

I am writing to ask you a great favour, dear
sfikolay Alexandrovitch. This is what it is. Until
ast year I have always lived with my university
liploma, which by land and by sea has served me for
L passport; but every time it has been vise the police
lave warned me that one cannot live with a diploma,

284 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

and that I ought to get a passport from "the proper de-
partment." I have asked everyone what this
"proper department" means, and no one has given
me an answer. A year ago the Moscow head police
officer gave me a passport on the condition that
within a year I should get a passport from "the proper
department." I can't make head or tail of it! The
other day I learned that as I have never been in the
government service and by education am a doctor,
I ought to be registered in the class of professional
citizens, and that a certain department, I believe the
heraldic, will furnish me with a certificate which will
serve me as a passport for all the days of my life.
I remembered that you had lately received the grade
of professional citizen, and with it a certificate, and
that therefore you must have applied somewhere and
to someone and so, in a sense, are an old campaigner.
For God's sake advise me to what depaitment I ought
to apply. What petition ought I to write, and how
many stamps ought I to put on it? What documents
must be enclosed with the petition? and so on, and
so on. In the town hall there is a "passport bureau."
Could not that bureau reveal the mystery if it is not
sufficiently clear to you?

Forgive me for troubling you, but I really don't
know to whom to apply, and I am a very poor lawyer
myself. . . .

Your "Medal" is often given at Korsh's Theatre,
and with success. It is played together with Myas-
nitsky's "Hare." I haven't seen them, but friends
tell me that a great difference is felt between the two
plays: that "The Medal" in comparison with "The
Hare" seems something clean, artistic, and having
form and semblance. There you have it ' Literary

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 28S

ten are swept out of the theatre, and plays are writ-
m by nondescript people, old and young, while the
Durnals and newspapers are edited by tradesmen,
overnment clerks, and young ladies. But there,
le devil take them! . . .

To E. P. YEGOROV.

Moscow,
December 11, 1891.

HONOURED EVGRAF PETROVITCH,

I write to explain why my journey to you did not
ome off. I was intending to come to you not as a
pecial correspondent, but on a commission from,
r more correctly by agreement with, a small circle
f people who want to do something for the famine-
tricken peasants. The point is that the public does*
ot tiust the administration and so is deterred from
ubscribmg. There are a thousand legends and
ables about the waste, the shameless theft, and so on.
'eople hold aloof from the Episcopal department
nd are indignant with the Red Cross. The owner
f our beloved Babkino, the Zemsky Natchalmk,
apped out to me, bluntly and definitely: "The Red
,ross in Moscow are thieves/' Such being the state
>f feeling, the government can scarcely expect serious
iclp from the public. And yet the public wants to<
ielp and its conscience is uneasy. In September the
ducated and wealthy classes of Moscow formed
hemselves into circles, thought, talked, and applied
or advice to leading persons; everyone was talking
if how to get round the government and organize
ndependently. They decided to send to the famine-
tncken provinces their own agents, who should make 1

286 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

acquaintance with the position on the spot, open feed-
ing centres, and so on. Some of the leaders of
these circles, persons of weight, went to Durnovo
to ask permission, and Durnovo refused it, declaring
that the organization of relief must be left to the
Episcopal department and the Red Cross. In short,
private initiative was suppressed at its first efforts.
Everyone was cast down and dispirited; some were
furious, some simply washed their hands of the whole
business. One must have the courage and authonty
of Tolstoy to act in opposition to all prohibitions and
prevailing sentiments, and to follow the dictates of
duty.

Well, now about myself. I am in complete
sympathy with individual initiative, for every man
lias the right to do good in the way he thinks best;
but all the discussion concerning the government,
the Red Cross, and so on, seemed to me inopportune
and impractical. I imagined that with coolness and
good humour, one might get round all the terrors
and delicacy of the position, and that there was no
need to go to the Minister about it. I went to
Sahalin without a single letter of recommendation,
and yet I did everything I wanted to. Why cannot
I go to the famine-stricken provinces? I remem-
bered, too, such representatives of the government as
you, Kiselyov, and all the Zemsky Natchalniks and
tax inspectors of my acquaintance all extremely
decent people, worthy of complete confidence. And
I resolved if only for a small region to combine
the two elements of officialdom and private initia-
tive. I want to come and consult you as soon as
I can. The public trusts me; it would trust you,
too, and I might reckon on succeeding. Do you re-

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 287

member I wrote to you? Suvonn came to Moscow
at the time; I complained to him that I did not know
your address. He telegraphed to Baranov, and
Baranov was so kind as to send it to me. Suvorm was
ill with influenza ; as a rule when he comes to Moscow
we spend whole days together discussing literature, of
which he has a wide knowledge; we did the same
on this occasion, and in consequence I caught his
influenza, was laid up, and had a raging cough.
Korolenko was in Moscow, and he found me ill,
Lung complications kept me ill for a whole month,
confined to the house and unable to do anything.
Now I am on the way to recovery, though I still cough
and am thin. There is the whole story for you. If
it had not been for the influenza we might together
perhaps have succeeded in extracting two or three
thousand or more from the public.

Your exasperation with the press I can quite
understand. The lucubrations of the journalists
annoy you who know the true position of affairs, in
the same \vay as the lucubrations of the profane about
diphtheria annoy me as a doctor. But what would
you have ? Russia is not England and is not France.
Our newspapers are not rich and they have very few
men at their disposal. To send to the Volga a profes-
sor of the Petrovsky Academy or an Errgelhardt is
expensive: to send a talented and business-like
member of the staff is impossible too he is wanted
at home The Times could organize a census in the
famine-stricken provinces at its own expense, could
settle a Kennan in every district, paying him forty
roubles a day, and then something sensible could be
done; but what can the Russkiya Vyedomosti or the
Novoye Vremya do, who consider an income of a hun-

288 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

drecl thousand as the wealth of Croesus? As for the
correspondents themselves, they are townsmen who
know the country only from Glyeb Uspensky. Their
position is an utterly false one, they must fly into
a district, sniff about, write, and dash on further.
The Russian correspondent has neither material
resources, nor freedom, nor authority. For two
hundred roubles a month he gallops on and on, and
only prays they may not be angry with him for his
involuntary and inevitable misrepresentations. He
feels guilty though it is not he that is to blame but
Russian darkness. The newspaper correspondents
of the west have excellent maps, encyclopaedias, and
statistics; in the west they could write their leports,
sitting at home, but among us a correspondent can
extract information only from talk and rumour.
Among us in Russia only three districts have been
investigated: the Tcherepov district, the Tambov
district, and one other. That is all in the whole of
Russia. The newspapers tell lies, the correspondents
aie duffers, but what's to be done? If our press said
nothing the position would be still more awful, you'll
admit that.

Your letter and your scheme for buying the cattle
from the peasants has stirred me up. I am ready
with all my heart and all my strength to follow your
lead and do whatever you think best. I have
thought it over for a long time, and this is my opinion :
it is no use to reckon upon the rich. It is too late.
Every wealthy man has by now forked out as many
thousands as he is destined to. Our one resource
now is the middle-class man who subscribes by the
rouble and the half-rouble. Those who in Septem-
ber were talking about private initiative will by now

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 289

have found themselves a niche in various boards
and committees and are already at work. So only
the middle-class man is left. Let us open a sub-
scription list. You shall write a letter to the editors,
and I will get it printed in Russkiya Vyedomosti and
Novoye Vremya. To combine the two elements above
mentioned, we might both sign the letter. If that is
inconvenient to you from an official point of view, one
might write in the third person as a communication
that in the fifth section of the Nizhni Novgorod dis-
trict this and that had been organized, that things

o ' o

were, thank God! going successfully and that sub-
scriptions could be sent to the Zemsky Natchalnik,
E. P. Yegorov, or to A. P. Chekhov, or to the editor
of such and such papeis. We need only to write at
some length. Write in full detail, I will add some-
thing, and the thing will be done. We must ask for
subscriptions and not for loans. No one will come
forward with a loan; it is uncomfortable. It is hard
to give, but it is harder still to take back.

I have only one rich acquaintance in Moscow,
V. A. Morozov, a lady well-known for her philan-
thropy. I went to see her yesterday with your letter.
I talked with her and dined with her. She is
absorbed now in the committee of education, which
is organizing relief centres for the school-children,
and is giving everything to that As education and
horses are incommensurables, V. A. promised me the
co-operation of the committee if we would start
centres for feeding the school-children and send
detailed information about it. I felt it awkward
to ask her for money on the spot, for people beg and
beg of her and fleece her like a fox. I only asked
her when she had any committees and board meetings

290 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

not to forget us, and she promised she would
not. . . .

If any roubles or half-roubles come in I will send
them on to you without delay. Dispose of me and
believe me that it would be a real happiness to me
to do at least something, for so far I have done abso-
lutely nothing for the famine-stricken peasants and
for those who are helping them.

To A. I. SMAGIN.

Moscow,
December 11, 1891.

. . . Well, now I have something to tell you, my
good sir. I am sitting at home in Moscow, but mean-
time my enterprise in the Nizhni Novgorod province
is in full swing already! Together with my friend
the Zemsky Natchalnik, an excellent man, we are
hatching a little scheme, on which we expect to spend
a hundred thousand or so, in the most remote section
of the province, where there are no landowners nor
doctors, nor even well-educated young ladies who are
now to be found in numbers even in hell. Apart
from famine relief of all sorts, we are making it our
chief object to save the crops of next year. Owing
to the fact that the peasants are selling their horses
for next to nothing, there is a grave danger that the
fields will not be ploughed for the spring corn, so
that the famine will be repeated next year. So we
are going to buy up the horses and feed them, and
in spring give them back to their owners; our work
is already firmly established, and in January I am
going there to behold its fruits. Here is my object
in writing to you. If in the course of some noisy

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 291

banquet you or anyone else should chance to collect,
if only half a rouble, for the famine fund, or if some
Korobotchka bequeaths a rouble for that object, or
if you yourself should win a hundred roubles, remem-
ber us sinners in your prayers, and spare us a part of
your wealth! Not at once but when you like, only
not later than in the spring. . . .

To A. S. SUVORIN.

Moscow,
December 11, 1891.

... I am coming to you. My lying is uninten-
tional. I have no money at all. I shall come when
I get the various sums owing to me. Yesterday I
got one hundred and fifty roubles, I shall soon get
more, then I shall fly to you.

In January I am going to Nizhni Novgorod prov-
ince : there my scheme is working already. I am very,
very glad. I am going to write to Anna Pavlovna.

Ah, if you knew how agonizingly my head
aches to-day! I want to come to Petersburg if only
to lie motionless indoors for two days and only go out
to dinner. For some reason I feel utterly exhausted.
It's all this cursed influenza.

How many persons could you and would you
undertake to feed? Tolstoy! ah, Tolstoy! In
these days he is not a man but a super-man, a Jupiter.
In the Sbornik he has published an article about the
relief centres, and the article consists of advice and
practical instructions. So business-like, simple, and
sensible that, as the editor of Russkiya Vyedo-
mosti said, it ought to be printed in the Govern-
ment Gazette, instead of in the Sbornik. . . .

292 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

December 13, 1891.

Now I understand why you don't sleep well at
night. If I had written a story like that I should not
have slept for ten nights in succession. The most
terrible passage is where Varya strangles the hero
and initiates him into the mysteries of the life beyond
the grave. It's terrifying and consistent with spirit-
ualism. You mustn't cut out a single word from
Varya's speeches, especially where they are both
riding on horseback. Don't touch it. The idea of
the story' is good, and the incidents are fantastic and

interesting.

But why do you talk of our "nervous age"?
There really is no nervous age. As people lived in
the past so they live now, and the nerves of to-day
are no worse than the nerves of Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob. Since you have already written the ending
I shall not put you out by sending you mine. I was
inspired and could not resist writing it. You can
read it if you like. Stories are good in this way,
that one can sit over them, pen in hand, for days
together, and not notice how time passes, and at the
same time be conscious of life of a sort. That's
fiom the hygienic point of view. And from the point
of view of usefulness and so on, to write a fairly good
story and give the reader ten to twenty interesting
minutes that, as Gilyarovsky says, is not a sheep
sneezing. . . .

I have a horrible headache again to-day. I don't
know what to do. Yes, I suppose it's old age, or if
it's not that it's something worse.

A little old gentleman brought me one hundred
roubles to-day for the famine.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 293

To A. I. SMAGIN.

Moscow,
December 16, 1891

. . . Alas! if I don't move into the country this
year, and if the purchase of the house and land for
some reason does not come off, I shall be playing the
part of a great villain in regard to my health. It
seems to me that I am dried and warped like an old
cupboard, and that if I go on living in Moscow next
season, and give myself up to scribbling excesses,
Gilyarovsky will read an excellent poem to welcome
my entrance into that country place where there is
neither sitting nor standing nor sneezing, but only
lying clown and nothing more. Do you know why
you have no success with women? Because you have
the most hideous, heathenish, desperate, tragic hand-
writing. . . .

To A. N. PLESHTCHEYEV.

Moscow,
December 25, 1891.

DEAR ALEXEY NIKOLAEVITCH,

Yesterday I chanced to learn your address,
and I write to you. If you have a free minute please
write to me how you are in health, and how you are
getting on altogether. Write, if only a couple of lines.

I have had influenza for the last six weeks. There
has been a complication of the lungs and I have a
cruel cough. In March I am going south to the prov-
ince of Poltava, and shall stay there till my cough
is gone. My sister has gone down there to buy a
house and garden.

294 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

Literary doings here are quiet but life is bustling.
There is a great deal of talk about the famine, and
a great deal of work resulting from the said talk.
The theatres are empty, the weather is wretched, there
are no frosts at all. Jean Shtcheglov is captivated
by the Tolstoy ans. Merezhkovsky sits at home as of
old, lost in a labyrinth of deep researches, and as of
old is very nice ; of Chekhov they say he has married
the heiress Sibiryakov and got five millions dowry
all Petersburg is talking of it. For whose benefit
and for what object this slander, I am utterly unable
to imagine. It's positively sickening to read letters
fiom Petersburg.

I have not seen Ostrovsky this year. . . .

We shall probably not meet very soon, as I am
going away in March and shall not return to the North
before November. I shall not keep a flat in Moscow,
as that pleasure is beyond my means. I shall stay
in Petersburg.

I embrace you warmly. By the way, a little
explanation in private. One day at dinner in Pans,
persuading me to remain there, you offered to lend
me money. I refused, and it seemed to me my refusal
hurt and vexed you, and I fancied that when we
parted there was a touch of coldness on your side.
Possibly I am mistaken, but if I am right I assure
you, my dear friend, on my word of honour, that I
refused not because I did not care to be under an
obligation to you, but simply from a feeling of self-
preservation; I was behaving stupidly in Paris, and
an extra thousand francs would only have been bad for
my health. Believe me that if I had needed it, I
would have asked you for a loan as readily as Suvorin.

God keep you.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 295

To V. A. TIHONOV.

Moscow,
February 22, 1892

. . . You are mistaken in thinking you were
drunk at Shtcheglov's name-day party. You had had
a drop, that was all. You danced when they all
danced, and your jigitivka on the cabman's box
excited nothing but general delight. As for your
criticism, it was most likely far from severe, as I don't
remember it. I only remember that Vvedensky and
I for some reason roared with laughter as we listened
to you.

Do you want my biography? Here it is. I was
born in Taganrog in 1860. I finished the course at
Taganrog high school in 1879. In 1884 I took my
degree in medicine at the University of Moscow. In
1888 I gained the Pushkin prize. In 1890 I made a
journey to Sahalin across Siberia and back by sea.
In 1891 I made a tour in Europe, where I drank
excellent wine and ate oysters. In 1892 I took part
in an orgy in the company of V. A. Tihonov at a
name-day party. I began writing in 1879. The
published collections of my works are: "Motley
Tales," "In the Twilight," "Stories," "Surly
People," and a novel, "The Duel." I have sinned
in the dramatic line too, though with moderation.
T have been translated into all the languages with
the exception of the foreign ones, though I have
indeed long ago been translated by the Germans.
The Czechs and the Serbs approve of me also, and
the French are not indifferent. The mysteries of
love I fathomed at the age of thirteen. With my

296 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

colleagues, doctors, and literary men alike, I am on
the best of terms. I am a bachelor. I should like
to receive a pension. I practice medicine, and so
much so that sometimes in the summer I perform
post-mortems, though I have not done so for two or
three years. Of authors my favourite is Tolstoy, of
doctors Zaharin.

All that is nonsense though. Write what you like.
If you haven't facts make up with lyricism.

To A. S. KISELYOV.

MELIHOVO,
STATION LOPASNYA,

MOSCOW-KURSK LINE.
March 7, 1892

This is our new address. And here are the details
for you. If a peasant woman has no troubles she
buys a pig. We have bought a pig, too, a big
cumbersome estate, the owner of which would in
Germany infallibly be made a herzog. Six hundred
and thirty-nine acres in two parts with land not ours
in between. Three hundred acres of young copse,
which in twenty years will look like a wood, at present
is a thicket of bushes. They call it "shaft wood,"
but to my mind the name of "switch wood" would be
more appropriate, since one could make nothing of
it at present but switches. There is a fruit-garden,
a park, big trees, long avenues of limes. The barns
and sheds have been recently built, and have a
fairly presentable appearance. The poultry house
is ^made in accordance with the latest deductions of
science, the well has an iron pump. The whole place
is shut off from the world by a fence in the style of a

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 297

palisade. The yard, the garden, the park, and the
threshing-floor aie shut off from each other in the
same way. The house is good and bad. It's more
roomy than our Moscow flat, it's light and warm,
roofed with iron, and stands in a fine position, has
a verandah into the garden, French windows, and so
on, but it is bad in not being lofty, not sufficiently
new, having outside a very stupid and naive appear-
ance, and inside swarms with bugs and beetles which
could only be got rid of by one means a fire : noth-
ing else would do for them.

There are flower-beds. In the garden fifteen
paces from the house is a pond (thirty-five yards long,
and thirty-five feet wide) , with carp and tench in it, so
that you can catch fish from the window. Beyond
the yard there is another pond, which I have not yet
seen. In the other part of the estate there is a river,
probably a nasty one. Two miles away there is a
broad river full of fish. We shall sow oats and clover.
We have bought clover seed at ten roubles a pood,
but we have no money left for oats. The estate has
been bought for thirteen thousand. The legal for-
malities cost about seven hundred and fifty roubles,
total fourteen thousand. The artist who sold it was
paid four thousand down, and received a mortgage
for five thousand at five per cent, for five years.
The remaining four thousand the artist will receive
from the Land Bank when in the spring I mortgage the
estate to a bank. You see what a good arrangement.
In two or three years I shall have five thousand, and
shall pay off the mortgage, and shall be left with only
the four thousand debt to the bank; but I have got to
live those two of three years, hang it all! What
matters is not the interest that is small, not more

298 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

than five hundred roubles a year but that I shall
he obliged all the time to think about quarter-days
and all sorts of horrors attendant on being in debt.
Moreover, your honour, as long as I am alive and
earning four or five thousand a year, the debts will
seem a trifle, and even a convenience, for to pay four
hundred and seventy mteiest is much easier than to
pay a thousand for a flat in Moscow; that is all true.
But what if I depart from you sinners to another
world that is, give up the ghost? Then the ducal
estate with the debts would seem to my parents in
their green old age and to my sister such a burden
that they would raise a wail to heaven.

I was completely cleaned out over the move.

Ah, if you could come and see us! In the first
place it would be very delightful and interesting to
see you; and in the second, your advice would save
us from a thousand idiocies. You know we don't
understand a thing about it. Like Raspluev, all I
know about agriculture is that the earth is black,
and nothing more. Write. How is it best to sow
clover? among the rye, or among the spring
wheat? . . .

To I. L. SHTCHEGLOV.

MELIHOVO,
March 9, 1892.

. . . Yes, such men as Ratchinsky are very rare
in this world. I understand your enthusiasm, my
dear fellow. After the suffocation one feels in the
proximity of A. and B. and the world is full of
them Ratchinsky with his ideas, his humanity, and
his purity, seems like a breath of spring. I am ready

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 299

o lay down my life for Ratchinsky ; but, dear friend,
allow me that "but" and don't be vexed I would
lot send my children to his school. Why? I re-
ceived a religious education in my childhood with
;hurch singing, with reading of the "apostles" and
he psalms in church, with regular attendance at
natins, with obligation to assist at the altar and ring
he bells. And, do you know, when I think now of
ny childhood, it seems to me rather gloomy. I have
10 religion now. Do you know, when my brothers
md I used to stand in the middle of the church and
sing the trio "May my prayer be exalted," or "The
Archangel's Voice," everyone looked at us with
emotion and envied our parents, but we at that mo-
[nent felt like little convicts. Yes, dear boy!
Elatchmsky I understand, but the children who are
[rained by him I don't know. Their souls are dark
For me. If there is joy in their souls, then they are
happier than I and my brothers, whose childhood was
suffering.

It is nice to be a lord. There is plenty of room,
it's warm, people are not continually pulling at the
bell; and it is easy to descend from one's lordship
and serve as concierge or porter. My estate, sir, cost
thirteen thousand, and I have only paid a third, the
rest is a debt which will keep me long years on the
chain.

Come and see me, Jean, together with Suvorin.
Make a plan with him. I have such a garden!
Such a naive courtyard, such geese! Write a little
oftener.

300 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

To A. S. SUVORIN.

MELIHOVO,
March 17, 1892.

. . . Ah, my dear fellow, if only you could take
a holiday! Living in the country is inconvenient.
The insufferable time of thaw and mud is beginning,
but something marvellous and moving is taking
place in nature, the poetry and novelty of which
makes up for all the discomforts of life. Every day
there are surprises, one better than another. The
starlings have returned, everywhere there is the
gurgling of water, in places where the snow has
thawed the grass is already green. The day drags
on like eternity. One lives as though in Australia,,
somewhere at the ends of the earth; one's mood is
calm, contemplative, and animal, in the sense that
one does not regret yesterday or look forward to to-
morrow. From here, far away, people seem very
good, and that is natural, for in going away into the
country we are not hiding from people but from
our vanity, which in town among people is un-
just and active beyond measure. Looking at the
spring, I have a dreadful longing that there should
be paradise in the other world. In fact, at moments
I am so happy that I superstitiously pull myself up
and remind myself of my creditors, who will one day
drive me out of the Australia I have so happily
won. . . .

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 301

To MADAME AVILOV.

MELIHOVO,
March 19, 1892.

HONOURED LIDYA ALEXYEVNA,

I have read your story "On the Road." If I
were the editor of an illustrated magazine, I should
publish the story with great pleasure; but here is my
advice as a reader: when you depict sad or unlucky
people, and want to touch the reader's heart, try to
be colder it gives their grief as it were a background,
against which it stands out in greater relief. As it
is, your heroes weep and you sigh. Yes, you must
be cold.

But don't listen to me, I am a bad critic. I have
not the faculty of forming my critical ideas clearly.
Sometimes I make a regular hash of it. ...

To A. S. SUVORIN.

MELIHOVO,

March, 1892.

The cost of labour is almost nil, and so I am very
well off. I begin to see the charms of capitalism.
To pull down the stove in the servants' quarters and
build up there a kitchen stove with all its accessories,
then to pull down the kitchen stove in the house arid
put up a Dutch stove instead, costs twenty roubles
altogether. The price of two men to dig, twenty-
five kopecks. To fill the ice cellar it costs thirty
kopecks a day to the workmen. A young labourer
who does not drink or smoke, and can read and
write, whose duties are to work the land and clean

302 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

the boots and look after the flower-garden, costs five
roubles a month. Floors, partitions, papering walls
all that is cheaper than mushrooms. And I am
at ease. But if I were to pay for labour a quarter
of what I get for my leisure I should be ruined in
a month, as the number of stove-builders, carpenters,
joiners, and so on, threatens to go for ever after the
fashion of a recurring decimal. A spacious life not
cramped within four walls requires a spacious pocket
too. I have bored you already, but I must tell you
one thing more: the clover seed costs one hundred
roubles a pood, and the oats needed for seed cost
more than a hundred. Think of that ! They proph-
esy a harvest and wealth for me, but what is that
to me! Better five kopecks in the present than a
rouble in the future. I must sit and work. I must
earn at least five hundred roubles for all these trifles.
I have earned half already. And the snow is melt-
ing, it is warm, the birds are singing, the sky is bright
and spring-like.

I am reading a mass of things. I have read
Lyeskov's "Legendary Characters," religious and
piquant a combination of virtue, piety, and lewd-
ness, but very interesting. Read it if you haven't
read it. I have read again Pisarev's "Criticism of
Pushkin." Awfully nai've. The man pulls Onye-
gm and Tatyana down from their pedestals, but
Pushkin remains unhurt. Pisarev is the grandfather
and father of all the critics of to-day, including
Burenin the same pettiness in disparagement, the
same cold and conceited wit, and the same coarseness
and indelicacy in their attitude to people. It is not
Pisarev's ideas that are brutalizing, for he has none,
but his coarse tone. His attitude to Tatyana, es-

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 303

pecially to her charming letter, which I love tenderly,
seems to me simply abominable. The critic has the
foul aroma of an insolent captious procurator.

We have almost finished furnishing; only the
shelves for my books are not done yet. When we
take out the double windows we shall begin painting
everything afresh, and then the house will have a very
presentable appearance.

There are avenues of lime-trees, apple-trees,
cherries, plums, and raspberries in the garden. . . .

MELIHOVO,

April 6, 1892

It is Easter. There is a church here, but no clergy.
We collected eleven roubles from the whole parish
and got a priest from the Davydov Monastery, who be-
gan celebrating the service on Friday. The church
is very old and chilly, with lattice windows. We
sang the Easter service that is, my family and my
visitors, young people. The effect was very good
and harmonious, particularly the mass. The peas-
ants were very much pleased, and they say they have
never had such a grand service. Yesterday the sun
shone all day, it was warm. In the morning I went
into the fields, from which the snow has gone already,
and spent half an hour in the happiest frame of mind:
it was amazingly nice! The winter corn is green
already, and there is grass in the copse.

You will not like Melihovo, at least at first. Here
everything is in miniature; a little avenue of lime-
trees, a pond the size of an aquarium, a little garden
and park, little trees; but when you have walked
about it once or twice the impression of littleness

304 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

goes off. There is great feeling of space in spite of
the village being so near. There is a great deal of
forest around. There are numbers of starlings, an^
the starling has the right to say of itself: "I sing to
my God all the days of my life." It sings all day
long without stopping. . . .

MELIHOVO,

April 8, 1892.

If Shapiro were to present me with the gigantic
photograph of which you write, I should not know
what to do with it. A cumbersome present. You
say that I used to be younger. Yes, imagine!
Strange as it may seem, I have passed thirty some
time ago, and I already feel forty close at hand. I
have grown old not in body only, but in spirit. I
have become stupidly indifferent to everything in the
world, and for some reason or other the beginning of
this indifference coincided with my tour abroad. I
get up and go to bed feeling as though interest in
life had dried up in me. This is either the illness
called in the newspapers nervous exhaustion, or some
working of the spirit not clear to the consciousness,
which is called in novels a spiritual revulsion. If it
is the latter it is all for the best, I suppose.

*#*#**

The artist Levitan is staying with me. Yesterday
evening I went out with him shooting. He shot at a
snipe; the bird, shot in the wing, fell into a pool. I
picked it up : a long beak, big black eyes, and beau-
tiful plumage. It looked at me with surprise. What
was I to do with it? Levitan scowled, shut his eyes,
and begged me, with a quiver in his voice: "My dear

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 305

fellow, hit him on the head with the butt-end of your
gun/' I said: "I can't." He went on nervously,
shrugging his shoulders, twitching his head and beg-
ging me to ; and the snipe went on looking at me in
wonder. I had to obey Levitan and kill it. One
beautiful creature in love the less, while two fools
went home and sat down to supper.

Jean Shtcheglov, in whose company you were so
bored for a whole evening, is a great opponent of
every sort of heresy, and amongst others of feminine
intellect; and yet if one compares him with K., for
instance, beside her he seems like a foolish little
monk. By the way, if you see K., give her my greet-
ings, and tell her that we are expecting her here.
She is very interesting in the open air and far more
intelligent than in town. . . .

To MADAME AVILOV.

MELIHOVO,
April 29, 1892

. . . Yes, it is nice now in the country, not only

nice but positively amazing. It's real spring, the

trees are coming out, it is hot. The nightingales are

singing, and the frogs are croaking in all sorts of

tones. I haven't a halfpenny, but the way I look at it

is this: the rich man is not he who has plenty of

money, but he who has the means to live now in the

luxurious surroundings given us by early spring.

Yesterday I was in Moscow, but I almost expired there

i of boredom and all manner of disasters. Would you

' believe it, a lady of my acquaintance, aged forty-two,

1 recognized herself in the twenty-year-old heroine of

306 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

my story, "The Grasshopper," and all Moscow is ac
cusing me of libelling her. The chief proof is the
external likeness. The lady paints, her husband is
a doctor, and she is living with an artist.

I am finishing a story ("Ward No. 6"), a very dull
one, owing to a complete absence of woman and the
element of love. I can't endure such stories. I
write it as it were by accident, thoughtlessly.

Yes, I wrote to you once that you must be uncon-
cerned when you write pathetic stories. And you did
not understand me. You may weep and moan over
your stories, you may suffer together with your heroes,
but I consider one must do this so that the reader
does not notice it. The more objective, the stronger
will be the effect.

To A. S. SUVORIN.

MELIHOVO,
May 15, 1892.

... I have got hold of the peasants and the shop-
keepers here. One had a haemorrhage from the
throat, another had his arm crushed by a tree, a
third had his little daughter sick. ... It seems
they would be in a desperate case without me. They
bow respectfully to me as Germans do to their pastor,
I am friends with them, and all goes well. . . .

May 28, 1892.

Life is short, and Chekhov, from whom you are ex-
pecting an answer, would like it to flash by brilliantly
and with dash. He would go to Prince's Island, to

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 307

Constantinople, and again to India and Sahalin. . . .
3ut m the first place he is not free, he has a respect-
ible family who need his protection. In the second,
le has a large dose of cowardice. Looking towards
he future I call nothing but cowardice. I am afraid
>f getting into a muddle, and every journey compli-
;ates my financial position. No, don't tempt me
vithout need. Don't write to me of the sea.

It is hot here. There are warm rains, the evenings
ire enchanting. Three- quarters of a mile from here
here is a good bathing place and good sport for
Dicnics, but no time to bathe or go to picnics. Either
[ am writing and gnashing my teeth, or settling
questions of halfpence with carpenters and labourers.
Vlisha was cruelly reprimanded by his superiors for
Doming to me every week instead of staying at home,
and now there is no one but me to look after the
farming, in which I have no faith, as it is on a petty
scale, and more like a gentlemanly hobby than real
vvoik. I have bought three mousetraps, and catch
twenty-five mice a day and carry them away to the
copse. It is lovely in the copse. . . .

Our starlings, old and young, suddenly flew away.
This puzzled us, for it won't be time for their migra-
tion for ever so long ; but suddenly we learn that the
other day clouds of grasshoppers from the south,
which were taken for locusts, flew over Moscow.
One wonders how did our starlings find out that on
precisely such a day and so many miles from Melihovo
these insects would fly past? Who told them about
it? Truly this is a great mystery. . . .

308 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

June 16.

. . . You want me to write my impressions to you.

My soul longs for breadth and altitude, but I am
forced to lead a narrow life spent over trashy roubles
and kopecks. There is nothing more vulgar than a
petty bourgeois life with its halfpence, its victuals,
its futile talk, and its useless conventional virtue; my
heart aches from the consciousness that I am working
for money, and money is the centre of all I do. This
aching feeling, together with a sense of justice, makes
my writing a contemptible pursuit in my eyes : I don't
respect what I write, I am apathetic and bored with
myself, and glad that I have medicine which, any-
way, I practise not for the sake of money I ought
to have a bath in sulphuric acid and flay off my skin,
and then grow a new hide. . . .

MELIHOVO,

August, 1.

My letters chase you, but do not catch you. I have
written to you often, and among other places to St.
Moritz. Judging from your letters you have had
nothing from me. In the first place, there is cholera
in Moscow and about Moscow, and it will be in our
parts some day soon. In the second place, I have
been appointed cholera doctor, and my section in-
cludes twenty-five villages, four factories, and one
monastery. I am organizing the building of bar-
racks, and so on, and I feel lonely, for all the cholera
business is alien to my heart, and the work, which in-
volves continual driving about, talking, and attention
to petty details, is exhausting for me. I have no time
to write. Literature has been thrown aside for a long
time now, and I am poverty-stricken, as I thought it

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 309

convenient for myself and my independence to refuse
the remuneration received by the section doctors. I
am bored, but there is a great deal that is interesting
in cholera if you look at it from a detached point
of view. I am sorry you are not in Russia. Material
for short letters is being wasted. There is more
good than bad, and in that cholera is a great contrast
to the famine which we watched in the winter. Now
all are working they are working furiously. At
the fair at Nizhni they are doing marvels which might
force even Tolstoy to take a respectful attitude to
medicine and the intervention of cultured people
generally in life. It seems as though they had got a
hold on the cholera. They have not only decreased
the number of cases, but also the percentage of
deaths. In immense Moscow the cholera does not
exceed fifty cases a week, while on the Don it is a
thousand a day an impressive difference. We
district doctors are getting ready; our plan of action
is definite, and there are grounds for supposing that
in our parts we too shall decrease the percentage of
mortality from cholera. We have no assistants, one
has to be doctor and sanitary attendant at one and
the same time. The peasants are rude, dirty in their
habits, and mistrustful; but the thought that our
labours are not thrown away makes all that scarcely
noticeable. Of all the Serpuhovo doctors I am the
most pitiable; I have a scurvy carriage and horses,
I don't know the roads, I see nothing by evening light,
I have no money, I am very quickly exhausted, and
worst of all, I can never forget that I ought to be
writing, and I long to spit on the cholera and sit down
and write to you, and I long to talk to you. I am
in absolute loneliness.

310 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

Our farming labours have been crowned with
complete success. The harvest is considerable,
and when we sell the corn Melihovo will bring us
more than a thousand roubles. The kitchen garden
is magnificent. There are perfect mountains of
cucumbers and the cabbage is wonderful. If it
were not for the accursed cholera I might say that
I have never spent a summer so happily as this one.

Nothing has been heard of cholera riots yet.
There is talk of some arrests, some manifestoes, and
so on. They say that A., the writer, has been con-
demned to fifteen years' penal servitude. If the
socialists are really going to exploit the cholera for
their own ends I shall despise them. Revolting
means for good ends make the ends themselves re-
volting. Let them get a lift on the backs of the doc-
tors and feldshers, but why lie to the peasants ? Why
persuade them that they are right in their ignorance
and that their coarse prejudices are the holy truth?
If I were a politician I could never bring myself to
disgrace my present for the sake of the future, even
though I weie promised tons of felicity for an ounce
of mean lying. Write to me as often as possible in
consideration of my exceptional position. I cannot
be in a good mood now, and your letters snatch me
away from cholera concerns, and carry me for a brief
space to another world. . . .

August 16

I'll be damned if I write to you again. I have
written to Abbazzio, to St. Montz. I have written a
dozen times at least, so far you have not sent
me one correct address, and so not one of my
letters has reached and my long description and lee-

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 311

tures about the cholera have been wasted. It's mor-
tifying. But what is most mortifying is that after a
^whole series of letters from me about our exertions
against the cholera, you all at once write me from gay
Biarritz that you envy my leisure ! Well, Allah for-
give you !

Well, I am alive and in good health. The summer
^vas a splendid one, dry, warm, abounding in the
fruits of the earth, but its whole charm was from
July onwards, spoilt by news of the cholera. While
you were inviting me in your letters first to Vienna,
and then to Abbazzio I was already one of the
doctors of the Serpuhovo Zemstvo, was trying to
catch the cholera by its tail and organizing a new
section full steam. In the morning I have to see
patients, and in the afternoon drive about. I drive,
I give lectures to the natives, treat them, get angry
with them, and as the Zemstvo has not granted me a
single kopeck for organizing the medical centres I
cadge from the wealthy, first from one and then
from another. I turn out to be an excellent beggar;
thanks to my beggarly eloquence, my section has
two excellent barracks with all the necessaries, and
five barracks that are not excellent, but horrid.
1 have saved the Zemstvo from expenditure even on
disinfectants. Lime, vitriol, and all sorts of stinking
stuff I have begged from the manufacturers for all
my twenty-five villages. In fact Kolomin ought to
be proud of having been at the same high school with
me. My soul is exhausted. I am bored. Not
to belong to oneself, to think about nothing but
diarrhoea, to start up in the night at a dog's barking
and a knock at the gate ("Haven't they come
for me?"), to drive with disgusting horses along

312 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

unknown roads; to read about nothing but cholera,
and to expect nothing but cholera, and at the same
time to be utterly uninterested in that disease, and
in the people whom one is serving that, my good
sir, is a hash which wouldn't agree with anyone.
The cholera is already in Moscow and in the Moscow
district. One must expect it from hour to hour.
Judging from its course in Moscow one must suppose
that it is already declining and that the bacillus is
losing its strength. One is bound to think, too,
that it is powerfully affected by the measures that
have been taken in Moscow and among us. The
educated classes are working vigorously, sparing
neither themselves nor their purses; I see them every
day, and am touched, and when I remember how
Zhitel and Burenin used to vent their acrid spleen on
these same educated people I feel almost suffocated.
In Nizhni the doctors and the cultured people gener-
ally have done marvels. I was overwhelmed with
enthusiasm when I read about the cholera. In the
good old times, when people were infected and died
by thousands, the amazing conquests that are being
made before our eyes could not even be dreamed of.
It's a pity you are not a doctor and cannot share my
delight that is, fully feel and recognize and appre-
ciate all that is being done. But one cannot tell
about it briefly.

The treatment of cholera requires of the doctor
deliberation before all thingsthat is, one has to
devote to each patient from five to ten hours or even
longer. As I mean to employ Kantani's treatment
that is clysters of tannin and sub-cutaneous injection
of a solution of common salt my position will be
worse than foolish; while I am busying myself over

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 313

one patient, a dozen can fall ill and die. You see I
am the only man for twenty- five villages, apart
from a feldsher who calls me " your honour," does
not venture to smoke in my presence, and cannot take
a step without me. If there are isolated cases I shall
be capital; but if there is an epidemic of only five
cases a day, then I shall do nothing but be irritable
and exhausted and feel myself guilty.

Of course there is no time even to think of litera-
ture. I am writing nothing. I refused remunera-
tion so as to preserve some little freedom of action
for myself, and so I have not a halfpenny. I am
waiting till they have threshed and sold the rye.
Until then I shall be living on "The Bear" and mush-
rooms, of which there are endless masses here. By
the way, I have never lived so cheaply as now. We
have everything of our own, even our own bread. I
believe in a couple of years all my household ex-
penses will not exceed a thousand roubles a year.

When you learn from the newspapers that the
cholera is over, you will know that I have gone back
to writing again. Don't think of me as a literary
man while I am in the service of the Zemstvo. One
can't do two things at once.

You write that I have given up Sahalin. I cannot
abandon that child of mine. When I am oppressed
by the boredom of belles-lettres I am glad to turn
to something else. The question when I shall finish
Sahalin and when I shall print does not strike me as
being important. While Galkin-Vrasskoy reigns
over the prison system I feel very much disinclined
to bring out my book. Of course if I am driven to
it by need, that is a different matter.

In all my letters I have pertinaciously asked you

314 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

one question, which of course you are not obliged to
answer: "Where are you going to be in the autumn,
and wouldn't you like to spend part of September and
October with me in Feodosia or the Crimea?" I
have an impatient desire to eat, drink, and sleep, and
talk about literature that is, do nothing, and at the
same time feel like a decent person. However, if
my idleness annoys you, I can promise to write with
or beside you, a play or a story. ... Eh? Won't
you? Well, God be with you, then.

The astronomer has been here twice. I felt bored
with her on both occasions. Svobodin has been
here too. He grows better and better. His serious
illness has made him pass through a spiritual meta-
morphosis.

See what a long letter I have written, even though
I don't feel sure that the letter will reach you.
Imagine my cholera-boredom, my cholera-loneliness,
and compulsory literary inactivity, and write to me
more, and oftener. Your contemptuous feeling for
France I share. The Germans are far above them,
though for some reason they are called stupid. And
the Franco-Russian Entente Cordiale I am as fond
of as Tolstoy is. There's something nastily sugges-
tive about these cordialities. On the other hand I
was awfully pleased at Virchow's visit to us.

We have raised a very nice potato and a divine
cabbage. How do you manage to get on without
cabbage-soup? I don't envy you your sea, nor your
freedom, nor the happy frame of mind you are in
abroad. The Russian summer is better than any-
thing. And by the way, I don't feel any great long-
ing to be abroad. After Singapore, Ceylon, and
perhaps even our Amur, Italy and even the crater

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 315

of Vesuvius do not seem fascinating. After being in
India and China I did not see a great difference be-
tween other European countries and Russia.

A neighbour of ours, the owner of the lenowned
Otrad, Count X, is staying now at Biarritz, having run
away from the cholera; he gave his doctor only five
hundred roubles for the campaign against the cholera.
His sister, the countess, who is living in my section,
when I went to discuss the provision of barracks for
her workmen, treated me as though I had come to ap-
ply for a situation. It mortified me, and I told her a
lie, pretending to be a rich man. I told the same lie
to the Archimandrite, who refuses to provide quarters
for the cases which may occur in the monastery. To
my question what would he do with the cases that
might be taken ill in his hostel, he answered me:
"They are persons of means and will pay you them-
selves. . . ." Do you understand? And I flared
up, and said I did not care about payment, as I was
well off, and that all I wanted was the security of
the monastery. . . . There are sometimes very
stupid and humiliating positions. . . . Before the
; count went away I met his wife. Huge diamonds in
1 her ears, wearing a bustle, and not knowing how to
hold herself. A millionaire. In the company of
, such persons one has a stupid schoolboy feeling of
wanting to be rude.

The village priest often comes and pays me long
visits; he is a very good fellow, a widower, and has
some illegitimate children.

Write or there will be trouble. . . .

316 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

MELIHOVO,
October 10, 1892.

Your telegram telling me of Svobodin's death
caught me just as I was going out of the yard to see
patients. You can imagine my feelings. Svobodin
stayed with me this summer ; he was very sweet and
gentle, in a serene and affectionate mood, and became
very much attached to me. It was evident to me that
he had not very long to live, it was evident to him
too. He had the thirst of the aged for everyday
peace and quiet, and had grown to detest the stage
and everything to do with the stage and dreaded
returning to Petersburg. Of course I ought to go to
the funeral, but to begin with, your telegram came
towards evening, and the funeral is most likely to-
morrow, and secondly the cholera is twenty miles
away, and I cannot leave my centre. There are seven
cases in one village, and two have died already.
The cholera may break out in my section. It is
strange that with winter coming on the cholera is
spreading over a wider and wider region.

I have undertaken to be the section doctor till
the fifteenth of October my section will be officially
closed on that day. I shall dismiss my feldsher,
close the barracks, and if the cholera comes, I shall
cut rather a comic figure. Add to that the doctor
of the next section is ill with pleurisy and so, if the
cholera appears in his section, I shall be bound,
from a feeling of comradeship, to undertake his
section.

So far I have not had a single case of cholera, but
I have had epidemics of typhus, diphtheria, scarla-
tina, and so on. At the beginning of summer I had

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 317

a great deal of work, then towards the autumn less

and less.

* * * * * *

The sum of my literal y achievement this summer,
thanks to the cholera, has been almost ml. I have
written little, and have thought about literature
even less. However, I have written two small stories
one tolerable, one bad.

Life has been hard work this summer, but it seems
to me now that I have never spent a summer so well
as this one. In spite of the turmoil of the cholera,
and the poverty which has kept tight hold of me all
the summer, I have liked the life and wanted to
live. How many trees I have planted! Thanks to
our system of cultivation, Melihovo has become un-
recogniza'ble, and seems now extraordinarily snug and
beautiful, though very likely it is good for nothing.
Great is the power of habit and the sense of property.
And it's marvellous how pleasant it is not to have to-
pay rent. We have made new acquaintances and
formed new relations. Our old terrois in facing
the peasants now seem ludicrous. I have served in
the Zemstvo, have presided at the Sanitary Council
and visited the factories, and I liked all that. They
think of me now as one of themselves, and stay the
night with me when they pass through Melihovo.
Add to that, that we have bought ourselves a new
comfortable covered carriage, have made a new road,
so that now we don't drive through the village. We
are digging a pond. . . . Anything else? In fact
hitherto everything has been new and interesting,
but how it will be later on, I don't know. There is
snow already, it is cold, but I don't feel drawn to
Moscow. So far I have not had any feeling of dulness.

318 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

The educated people here are very charming and
interesting. What matters most, they are honest.
Only the police are unattractive.

We have seven hoises, a broad-faced calf, and
puppies, called Muir and Mernlees. . . .

November 22, 1892

Snow is falling by day, while at night the moon is
shining its utmost, a gorgeous amazing moon. It
is magnificent. But nevertheless, I marvel at the
fortitude of landowners who spend the winter in the
country; there's so little to do that if anyone is not
in one way or another engaged in intellectual work,
he is inevitably bound to become a glutton or a
drunkard, or a man like Turgenev's Pigasov. The
monotony of the snowdrifts and the bare trees, the
long nights, the moonlight, the deathlike stillness
day and night, the peasant women and the old ladies
all that disposes one to indolence, indifference, and
an enlarged liver. . . .

November 25, 1892.

It is easy to understand you, and there is no need
for you to abuse yourself for obscurity of expression.
You are a hard drinker, and I have regaled you with
sweet lemonade, and you, after giving the lemonade
its due, justly observe that there is no spirit in it.
That is just what is lacking in our productions
the alcohol which could intoxicate and subjugate,
and you state that very well. Why not? Putting
aside "Ward No. 6" and myself, let us discuss the
matter in general, for that is more interesting. Let
us discuss the general causes, if that won't bore you,
.and let us include the whole age. Tell me honestly,

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 319

who of my contemporaries that is, men between
thirty and forty-five have given the world one single
drop of alcohol? Are not Korolenko, Nadson, and
all the playwrights of to-day, lemonade? Have
Ryepm's or Shishkin's pictures turned your head?
Charming, talented, you are enthusiastic; but at
the same time you can't forget that you want to
smoke. Science and technical knowledge are passing
through a great period now, but for our sort it is a
flabby, stale, and dull time. We are stale and dull
ourselves, we can only beget gutta-percha boys,*
and the only person who does not see that is Stassov,
to whom nature has given a rare faculty for getting
drunk on slops. The causes of this are not to be
found in our stupidity, our lack of talent, or our
insolence, as Burenin imagines, but in a disease which
for the artist is worse than syphilis or sexual exhaus-
tion. We lack "something," that is true, and that
means that, lift the robe of our muse, and you will
find within an empty void. Let me remind you that
the writers, who we say are for all time or are simply
good, and who intoxicate us, have one common and
very important characteristic ; they are going towards
something and are summoning you towards it, too,
and you feel not with your mind, but with your whole
being, that they have some object, just like the ghost
of Hamlet's father, who did not come and disturb
the imagination for nothing. Some have more
immediate objects the abolition of serfdom, the
liberation of their country, politics, beauty, or simply
vodka, like Denis Davydov; others have remote
objects God, life beyond the grave, the happiness
of humanity, and so on. The best of them are

* An allusion to Grigorovitch's well-known story.

320 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

lealists and paint life as it is, but, through every
line's being soaked in the consciousness of an object,
you feel, besides life as it is, the life which ought
to be, and that captivates you. And we? We!
We paint life as it is, but beyond that nothing at
all. . . . Flog us and we can do no more! We
have neither immediate nor remote aims, and in our
soul there is a great empty space. We have no
politics, we do not believe in revolution, we have no
God, we are not afraid of ghosts, and I personally
am not afraid even of death and blindness. One
-who wants nothing, hopes for nothing, and fears
nothing, cannot be an artist. Whether it is a disease
or not what it is does not matter ; but we ought to
recognize that our position is worse than a governor's.
I don't know how it will be with us in ten or twenty
years then circumstances may be different, but
meanwhile it would be rash to expect of us anything
of real value, apart from the question whether we
have talent or not. We write mechanically, merely
obeying the long-established arrangement in accord-
ance with which some men go into the government
seivice, others in to trade, others write. . . . Grigoro-
vitch and you think I am clever. Yes, I am at least
so far clever as not to conceal from myself my disease,
and not to deceive myself, and not to cover up my
own emptiness with other people's rags, such as the
ideas of the sixties, and so on. I am not going to
throw myself like Garshin over the banisters, but I
am not going to flatter myself with hopes of a better
future either. I am not to blame for my disease, and
it's not for me to cure myself, for this disease, it must
be supposed, has some good purpose hidden from us,
and is not sent in vain. . . .

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 321

February, 1893.

My God! What a glorious thing "Fathers and
Children" is ! It is positively terrifying. Bazarov's
illness is so powerfully done that I felt ill and had a
sensation as though I had caught the infection from
him. And the end of Bazarov? And the old men?
And Kukshina? It's beyond words. It's simply
a work of genius. I don't like the whole of "On the
Eve," only Elena's father and the end. The end
is full of tragedy. "The Dog" is very good, the
language is wonderful in it. Please read it if you
have forgotten it. "Acia" is charming, "A Quiet
Backwater" is too compressed and not satisfactory.
I don't like "Smoke" at all. "The House of Gentle-
folk" is weaker than "Fathers and Children," but the
end is like a miracle, too. Except for the old woman
in "Fathers and Children" that is, Bazaiov's
mother and the mothers as a rule, especially
the society ladies, who are, however, all alike (Liza's
mother, Elena's mother), and Lavretsky's mother,
who had been a serf, and the humble peasant woman,
all Turgenev's girls and women are insufferable in
their artificiality, and forgive my saying it falsity.
Liza and Elena are not Russian girls, but some sort of
Pythian prophetesses, full of extravagant pretensions.
Inna in "Smoke," Madame Odintsov in "Fathers
and Children," all the lionesses, in fact, fiery, allur-
ing, insatiable creatures for ever craving for some-
thing, are all nonsensical. When one thinks of Tol-
stoy's "Anna Karenin," all these young ladies of
Turgenev's, with their seductive shoulders, fade away
into nothing. The negative types of women where
Turgenev is slightly caricaturing (Kukshina) or jest-

322 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

ing (the descriptions of balls) are wonderfully drawn,
and so successful, that, as the saying is, you can't
pick a hole in it.

The descriptions of nature are fine, but ... I
feel that we have already got out of the way of
such descriptions and that we need something differ-
ent. . . .

April 26, 1893.

. . . . I am reading Pisemsky. His is a great, very
great talent! The best of his works is "The Carpen-
ters' Guild." His novels are exhausting in their
minute detail. Everything in him that has a tem-
porary character, all his digs at the critics and liberals
of the period, all his critical observations with their
assumption of smartness and modernity, and all the
so-called profound reflections scattered here and there
how petty and naive it all is to our modern ideas!
The fact of the matter is this: a novelist, an artist,
ought to pass by everything that has only a temporary
value. Pisemsky's people are living, his tempera-
ment is vigorous. Skabitchevsky in his history
attacks him for obscurantism and treachery, but, my
God ! of all contemporary writers I don't know a single
one so passionately and earnestly liberal as Pisem-
sky. All his priests, officials, and generals are regular
blackguards. No one was so down on the old legal
and military set as he.

By the way, I have read also Bourget's "Cosmo-
pohs." Rome and the Pope and Correggio and
Michael Angelo and Titian and doges and a fifty-
year-old beauty and Russians and Poles are all in
Bourget, but how thin and strained and mawkish and
false it is in comparison even with our coarse and
simple Pisemsky! . . .

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 323

What a good thing I gave up the town ! Tell all
the Fofanovs, Tchermnys, et tutti quanti who live by
literature, that living in the country is immensely
cheaper than living in the town. I experience this
now every day. My family costs me nothing now,
for lodging, bread, vegetables, milk, butter, horses,
are all our own. And there is so much to do, there
is not time to get through it all. Of the whole family
of Chekhovs, I am the only one to lie down, or sit at
the table: all the rest are working from morning till
night. Drive the poets and literary men into the
country. Why should they live in starvation and
beggary? Town life cannot give a poor man rich
material in the sense of poetry and art. He lives
within four walls and sees people only at the editors'
offices and in eating-shops. . . .

MELIHOVO,
January 25, 1894.

I believe I am mentally sound. It is true I have
no special desire to live, but that is not, so far, disease,
but something probably passing and natural. It
does not follow every time that an author describes
someone mentally deranged, that he is himself
deranged. I wrote "The Black Monk" without
any melancholy ideas, through cool reflection. I
simply had a desire to describe megalomania. The
monk floating across the country was a dream, and
when I woke I told Misha about it. So you can tell
Anna Ivanovna that poor Anton Pavlovitch, thank
God! has not gone out of his mind yet, but that he
eats a great deal at supper and so he dreams of
monks.

I keep forgetting to write to you: read Ertel's

324 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

stoiy "The Seers" in "Russkaya Mysl." There is
poetry and something terrible in the old-fashioned
fairy-tale style about it. It is one of the best new
things that has come out in Moscow. . . .

YALTA,

March 27, 1894

I am in good health generally, ill in certain parts.
For instance, a cough, palpitations of the heart,
hemorrhoids. I had palpitations of the heart
incessantly for six days, and the sensation all the
time was loathsome. Since I have quite given up
smoking I have been free from gloomy and anxious
moods. Perhaps because I am not smoking, Tol-
stoy's morality has ceased to touch me ; at the bottom
of my heart I take up a hostile attitude towards it,
and that of course is not just. I have peasant
blood in my veins, and you won't astonish me with
peasant virtues. From my childhood I have believed
in progress, and I could not help believing in it
since the difference between the time when I used
to be thrashed and when they gave up thrashing
me was tremendous. . . . But Tolstoy's philosophy
touched me profoundly and took possession of me
for six or seven years, and what affected me
was not its general propositions, with which I
was familiar beforehand, but Tolstoy's manner of
expressing it, his reasonableness, and probably
a sort of hypnotism. Now something in me pro-
tests, reason and justice tell me that in the electricity
and heat of love for man there is something
greater than chastity and abstinence from meat.
War is an evil and legal justice is an evil; but

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 325

it does not follow from that that I ought to wear
baik shoes and sleep on the stove with the labourer,
and so on, and so on. But that is not the point, it is
not a matter of pro and con; the thing is that in one
way or another Tolstoy has passed for me, he is not
in my soul, and he has departed from me, saying:
"I leave this your house empty." I am untenanted.
I am sick of theorizing of all sorts, and such
bounders as Max Nordau I read with positive disgust.
Patients in a fever do not want food, but they do
want something, and that vague craving they express
as "longing for something sour." I, too, want
something sour, and that's not a mere chance feeling,
for I notice the same mood in others around me. It
is just as if they had all been in love, had fallen
out of love, and now were looking for some new
distraction. It is very possible and very likely
that the Russians will pass through another period
of enthusiasm for the natural sciences, and that the
materialistic movement will be fashionable. Natural
science is performing miracles now. And it may act
upon people like Mamay, and dominate them by its
mass and grandeur. All that is in the hands of God,
however. And theoiizing about it makes one's head
go round.

To L. S. MIZINOV.

YALTA,
March 27, 1894.

DEAR LIKA,

Thanks for your letter. Though you do
sccare me in your letter saying you are soon going to
die, though you do taunt me with having rejected you,

326 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

yet thank you all the same; I know perfectly well you
are not going to die, and that no one has rejected
you.

I am m Yalta and I am dreary, very dreary indeed.
The aristocracy, so to call it, are performing '"Faust,"
and I go to the rehearsals and there I enjoy the
spectacle of a perfect flower-bed of black, red,
flaxen, and brown heads; I listen to the singing and
I eat. At the house of the principal of the high
school I eat tchibureks, and saddle of lamb with
boiled grain ; in various estimable families I eat green
soup; at the confectioner's I eat in my hotel also.
I go to bed at ten and I get up at ten, and after dinner
I lie down and rest, and yet I am bored, dear Lika.
I am not bored because "my ladies" are not with
me, but because the northern spring is better than
the spring here, and because the thought that I
must, that I ought to write never leaves me for an
instant. To write and write and write! It is my
opinion that true happiness is impossible without
idleness. My ideal is to be idle and to love a plump
girl. My loftiest happiness is to walk or to sit
doing nothing; my favourite occupation is to gather
up what is not wanted (leaves, straws, and so on)
and to do what is useless. Meanwhile, I am a literary
man, and have to write here in Yalta. Dear Lika,
when you become a great singer and are paid a
handsome salary, then be charitable to me, marry me,
and keep me at your expense, that I may be free to
do nothing. If you really are going to die, it might
be undertaken by Varya Eberly, whom, as you know,
I love. I am so all to pieces with the perpetual
thought of work I ought to do and can't avoid that
for the last week I have been continually tormented

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 327

with palpitations of the heart. It's a loathsome
sensation.

I have sold my fox-skin greatcoat for twenty
roubles! It cost sixty, but as forty roubles' worth
of fur has peeled off it, twenty roubles was not too low
a puce. The goosebernes are not ripe here yet, but
it is warm and bright, the trees are coming out, the
sea looks like summer, the young ladies are yearning
for sensations: but yet the north is better than the
south of Russia, in spring at any rate. In our part
nature is more melancholy, more lyrical, more
Levrtanesque ; here it is neither one thing nor the
other, like good, sonorous, but frigid verse. Thanks to
my palpitations I haven't drunk wine for a week, and
that makes the surroundings seem even poorer. . . .

M. gave a concert here, and made one hundred
and fifty roubles clear profit. He roared like a
grampus but had an immense success. I am awfully
sorry I did not study singing; I could have roared
too, as my throat is rich in husky elements, and they
say I have a real octave. I should have earned
money, and been a favourite with the ladies. . . .

To HIS BROTHER ALEXANDR.

MELIHOVO,
April 15, 1894

... I have come back from the flaming Tavrida
and am already sitting on the cool banks of my pond.
It's very warm, however: the thermometer runs up
to twenty-six. . . .

I am busy looking after the land: I am making
new avenues, planting flowers, chopping down dead

328 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

trees, and chasing the hens and the dogs out of the
garden. Literature plays the part of Erakit, who
was always in the background. I don't want to
write, and indeed, it's hard to combine a desire to
live and a desire to write. . . .

To A. S. SUVORIN.

MELIHOVO,

April 21, 1894

Of course it is very nice in the country; in fine
weather Russia is an extraordinarily beautiful and
enchanting country, especially for those who have
been born and spent their childhood in the country.
But you will never buy yourself an estate, as you don't
know what you want. To like an estate you must
make up your mind to buy it; so long as it is not yours
it will seem comfortless and full of defects. My
cough is considerably better, I am sunburnt, and they
tell me I am fatter, but the other day I almost fell
down and I fancied for a minute that I was dying.
I was walking along the avenue with the prince,
our neighbour, and was talking when all at once
something seemed to break in my chest, I had a feel-
ing of warmth and suffocation, there was a singing
in my ears, I remembered that I had been having
palpitations for a long time and thought "tliey
must have meant something then." I went rapidly
towards the verandah on which visitors were
sitting, and had one thought that it would be
awkward to fall down and die before strangers;
but I went into my bedroom, drank some water,
and recovered.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 329

So you are not the only one who suffers from
staggering!

I am beginning to build a pretty lodge. . . .

May 9,

I have no news. The weather is most exquisite,
and in the foliage near the house a nightingale is
building and shouting incessantly. About twelve
miles from me there is the village of Pokrovskoe-
Meshtcherskoe ; the old manor house there is now the
lunatic asylum of the province. The Zemsky doc-
tors from the whole Moscow province met there on
the fourth of May, to the number of about seventy-
five ; I was there too. There are a great many patients
but all that is interesting material for alienists
and not for psychologists. One patient, a mystic,
preaches that the Holy Trinity has come upon eaith
in the form of the metropolitan of Kiev, loannikiy.
"A limit of ten years has been given us; eight have
passed, only two years are left. If we do not want
Russia to fall into ruins like Sodom, all Russia must
go in a procession with the Cross to Kiev, as Moscow
went to Troitsa, and pray there to the divine martyr
in the noble form of the metropolitan loannikiy."
This queer fellow is convinced that the doctors in
the asylum are poisoning him, and that he is being
saved by the miraculous intervention of Christ in the
form of the metropolitan. He is continually praying
to the East and singing, and, addressing himself to
God, invariably adds the words, "in the noble form
of the metropolitan loannikiy." He has a lovely
expression of face. . . .

From the madhouse I returned late at night in my
troika. Two-thirds of the wav I had to drive

330 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

through the forest in the moonlight, and I had a
wonderful feeling such as I have not had for a long
time, as though I had come back from a tryst. I
think that nearness to nature and idleness are
essential elements of happiness; without them it is
impossible. . . .

To MADAME AVILOV.

MELJHOVO,
July, 1894

I have so many visitors that I cannot answer your
last letter. I want to write at length but am pulled
up at the thought that any minute they may come
in and hinder me. And in fact while I write the
word "hinder," a girl has come in and announced
that a patient has arrived; I must go. ... I have
grown to detest writing, and I don't know what to do.
I would gladly take up medicine and would accept
any sort of post, but I no longer have the physical
elasticity for it. When I write now or think I ought
to write I feel as much disgust as though I were eat-
ing soup from which I had just removed a beetle
forgive the comparison. What I hate is not the writ-
ing itself, but the literary entourage from which one
cannot escape, and which one takes everywhere as
the earth takes its atmosphere. . . .

To A. S. SUVORIN.

MELIHOVO,
August 15, 1894

Our trip on the Volga turned out rather a queer
one in the end. Potapenko and I went to Yaroslav
to take a steamer from there to Tsaritsyn, then to

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 331

Calatch, from there by the Don to Taganrog. The
ourney from Yaroslav to Nizhni is beautiful, but

had seen it before. Moreover, it was very hot in
he cabin and the wind lashed in our faces on deck,
rhe passengers were an uneducated set, whose
)resence was irritating. At Nizhni we were met by
V., Tolstoy's friend. The heat, the dry wind, the
loise of the fair and the conversation of N. suddenly
nade me feel so suffocated, so ill at ease, and so sick,
that I took my portmanteau and ignominiously
led to the railway station. . . . Potapenko fol-
iowed me. We took the train for Moscow, but we
were ashamed to go home without having done any-
thing, and we decided to go somewhere if it had to be
to Lapland. If it had not been for his wife our choice
would have fallen on Feodosia, but . . . alas! we
have a wife living at Feodosia. We thought it over,
we talked it over, we counted over our money, and
came to the Psyol to Suma, which you know. . . .
Well, the Psyol is magnificent. There is warmth,
there is space, an immensity of water and of greenery
and delightful people. We spent six days on the
Psyol, ate and drank, walked and did nothing: my
ideal of happiness, as you know, is idleness. Now I
am at Melihovo again. There is a cold rain, a leaden
sky, mud.

* *

It sometimes happens that one passes a third-class
refreshment room and sees a cold fish, cooked long
before, and wonders carelessly who wants that unap-
petising fish. And yet undoubtedly that fish is
wanted, and will be eaten, and there are people who
will think it nice. One may say the same of the

332 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

works of N. He is a bourgeois writer, writing for
the unsophisticated public who travel third class.
For that public Tolstoy and Turgenev are too
luxurious, too aristocratic, somewhat alien and not
easily digested. There is a public which eats salt
beef and horse-radish sauce with relish, and does not
care for artichokes and asparagus. Put yourself at
its point of view, imagine the grey, dreary courtyard,
the educated ladies who look like cooks, the smell of
paraffin, the scantiness of interests and tasks and
you will understand N. and his readers. He is
colourless ; that is partly because the life he describes
lacks colour. He is false because bourgeois writers
cannot help being false. ' They are vulgar writers
peifected. The vulgarians sm together with their
public, while the bourgeois are hypocritical with them
and flatter their narrow virtue.

MELIHOVO,
February 25, 1895.

... I should like to meet a philosopher like
Nietzsche somewhere m a tram or a steamer, and to
spend the whole night talking to him. I consider
his philosophy won't last long, however. It's more
showy than convincing. . . .

MELIHOVO,
March 16, 1895.

Instead of you, heaven has sent me N , who has
come to see me with E. and Z., two young duffers
who never miss a single word but induce in the whole
household a desperate boredom. N. looks flabby
and physically slack; he has gone off, but has become
warmer and more good-natured; he must be going

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 333

to die. When my mother was ordering meat from
the butcher, she said he must let us have better meat,
as N. was staying with us from Petersburg.

"What N.?" asked the butcher in surprise "the
one who writes books?" and he sent us excellent
meat. So the butcher does not know that I write 1
Looks, for he never sends anything but gristle for my
benefit. . . .

Your little letter about physical games for students
will do good if only you will go on insisting on the
subject. Games are absolutely essential. Playing
games is good for health and beauty and liberalism,
since nothing is so conducive to the blending of
classes, et cetera, as public games. Games would
give our solitary young people acquaintances ; young
people would more frequently fall in love; but games
should not be instituted before the Russian student
ceases to be hungry. No skating, no croquet, can
keep the student cheerful and confident on an empty
stomach.

MELIHOVO,
March 23, 1895

I told you that Potapenko was a man very full of
life, but you did not believe me. In the entrails of
every Little Russian lie hidden many treasures. I
fancy when our generation grows old, Potapenko will
be the gayest and j oiliest old man of us all.

By all means I will be married if you wish it. But
on these conditions: everything must be as it has
been hitherto that is, she must live in Moscow while
I live in the country, and I will come and see her.
Happiness continued from day to day, from morning
to morning, I cannot stand. When every day I am

334 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

told of the same thing, in the same tone of voice, I
become furious. I am furious, for instance, in the
society of S., because he is very much like a woman
("a clever and responsive woman") and because in
his presence the idea occurs to me that my wife might
be like him. I promise you to be a splendid husband,
but give me a wife who, like the moon, won't appear
in my sky every day; I shan't write any better for
being married. . . .

Mamin-Sibiryak is a very nice fellow and an excel-
lent writer. His last novel "Bread" is praised;
Lyeskov was particularly enthusiastic about it.
Theie are undoubtedly fine things in his work, and
in his more successful stories the peasants are
depicted every bit as well as in "Master and Man."

This is the fourth year I have been living at
Melihovo. My calves have turned into cows, my
copse has grown at least a yard higher, my heirs will
make a capital bargain over the timber and will call
me an ass, for heirs are never satisfied.

MELIHOVO,
March 30, 1895

. . . We have spring here but there are regular
mountains of snow, and there is no knowing when
it will thaw. As soon as the sun hides behind a
cloud there begins to be a chill breath from the snow,
and it is horrible. Masha is already busy in the
flower-beds and borders. She tires herself out and
is constantly cross, so there is no need for her to read
Madame Smirnov's article. The advice given is
excellent; the young ladies will read it, and it will
be their salvation. Only one point is not clear:
how are they going to get rid of the apples and cab-

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 335

bages if the estate is far from the town, and of what
stuff are they going to make their own dresses if their
rye does not sell at all, and they have not a halfpenny?
To live on one's land by the labour of one's own hands
and the sweat of one's brow is only possible on one
condition; that is, if one works oneself like a peasant,
without regard for class or sex. There is no making
use of slaves nowadays, one must take the scythe and
axe oneself, and if one can't do that, no gardens will
help one. Even the smallest success in farming
is only gained in Russia at the price of a cruel
struggle with nature, and wishing is not enough
for the struggle, you need bodily strength and grit,
you want traditions and have young ladies all that?
To advise young ladies to take up farming is much
the same as to advise them to be bears, and to bend
yokes. . . .

I have no money, but I live in the country: there
are no restaurants and no cabmen, and money does
not seem to be needed.

MELIHOVO,

Apnl 13, 1895.

I am sick of Sienkiewicz's "The Family of the
Polonetskys." It's the Polish Easter cake with
saffron. Add Potapenko to Paul Bourget, sprinkle
with Warsaw eau-de-Cologne, divide in two, and you
get Sienkiewicz. "The Polonetskys" is unmistak-
ably inspired by Bourget's "Cosmopolis," by Rome
and by marriage (Sienkiewicz has lately got mar-
ried). We have the catacombs and a queer old
professor sighing after idealism, and Leo XIII.
with the unearthly face among the saints, and the
advice to return to the prayer-book, and the libel
on the decadent who dies of morphinism after con-

336 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

fessing and taking the sacrament that is, after
repenting of his errors in the name of the Church.
There is a devilish lot of family happiness and talk-
ing about love, and the hero's wife is so faithful to
lier husband and so subtly comprehends "with her
heart" the mysteries of God and life, that in the
end one feels mawkish and uncomfortable as after
a slobbering kiss. Sienkiewicz has evidently not
read Tolstoy, and does not know Nietzsche, he talks
about hypnotism like a shopman; on the other hand
every 7 page is positively sprinkled with Rubens,
Borghesi, Correggio, Botticelli and that is done to
show off his culture to the bourgeois reader and make
a long nose on the sly at materialism. The object
of the novel is to lull the bourgeoisie to sleep in its
golden dreams. Be faithful to your wife, pray with
her over the prayer-book, save money, love sport,
and all is well with you in this world and the next.
The bourgeoisie is very fond of so-called practical
types and novels with happy endings, since they
soothe it with the idea that one can both accumulate
capital and preserve innocence, be a beast and at the
same time be happy. . . .

I wish you every sort of blessing. I congratulate
you on the peace between Japan and China, and hope
we may quickly obtain a Feodosia free from ice on
ihe East Coast, and may make a railway to it.

The peasant woman had not troubles enough so
f she bought a pig. And I fancy we are saving up a
lot of trouble for ourselves with this ice-free port *
It will cost us dearer than if we were to take it into
our heads to wage war on all Japan. However, fu-
tura sunt in manibus deorum.

* Prophetic of Port Arthur and the Japanese War.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 337

MELIHOVO,
October 21, 1895.

Thanks for your letter, for your warm words and
your invitation. I will come, but most likely not be-
fore the end of November, as I have a devilish lot to
clo. First in the spring I am going to build a new
school in the village where I am school warden; be-
fore beginning I have to make a plan and calculations,
and to drive off here and there, and so on. Secondly
can you imagine it I am writing a play which I
shall probably not finish before the end of November.
I am wnting it not without pleasure, though I swear
fearfully at the conventions of the stage. It's a
comedy, there are three women's parts, six men's,
four acts, landscapes (view over a lake) ; a great deal
of conversation about literature, little action, tons of
love.* I read of Ozerova's failure and was sorry,
for nothing is more painful than failing. ... I
have read of the success of the "Powers of Darkness"
in your theatre. . . . When I was at Tolstoy's in
August, he told me, as he was wiping his hands after
washing, that he wouldn't alter his play. And now,
remembering that, I fancy that he knew even then
that his play would be passed by the censor in toto.
I spent two days and a night with him. He made
a delightful impression, I felt as much at ease as
though I were at home, and our talks were easy. . . .

Moscow,
October 26, 1895

Tolstoy's daughters are very nice. They adore
their father and have a fanatical faith in him and
that means that Tolstoy really is a great moral force,
* "The Seagull."

338 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

for if he were insincere and not irreproachable his
daughters would be the first to take up a sceptical at-
titude to him, for daughters are like sparrows: you
don't catch them with empty chaff. ... A man
can deceive his fiancee or his mistress as much as
he likes, and, in the eyes of a woman he loves, an ass
may pass for a philosopher; but a daughter is a dif-
ferent matter. . . .

MELIHOVO,
November 21, 1895

Well, I have finished with the play. I began it
forte and ended it pianissimo contrary to all the
rules of dramatic art. It has turned into a novel.
I am rather dissatisfied than satisfied with it, and
reading over my new-born play, I am more con-
vinced than ever that I am not a dramatist. The
acts are very short. There are four of them.
Though it is so far only the skeleton of a play, a
plan which will be altered a million times before the
coming season, I have ordered two copies to be typed
and will send you one, only don't let anyone read
it. ...

To HIS BROTHER MIHAIL.

PETERSBURG,
October 15, 1896

. . . My "Seagull" comes on on the seventeenth
of October. Madame Kommissarzhevsky acts amaz-
ingly. There is no news. I am alive and well. I
shall be at Mehhovo about the twenty-fifth or towards
the end of October. On the twenty-ninth is the meet-
ing of the Zemstvo, at which I must be present as
there will be a discussion about roads. . . .

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 339

To A. S. SUVORIN.

PETERSBURG,
October 18, 1896.

I am off to Melihovo. All good wishes. . . .
Stop the printing of the plays. I shall never forget
yesterday evening, but still I slept well, and am set-
ting off in a very tolerable good humour.

Write to me. ... I have received your letter.
I am not going to produce the play in Moscow. I
shall never either write plays or have them acted.

To HIS SISTER.

PETERSBURG,
October 18, 1896.

I am setting off to Melihovo. I shall be there to-
moirow between one or two o'clock in the afternoon.
Yesterday's adventure did not astonish or greatly dis-
appoint me, for I was prepared for it by the rehearsals
and I don't feel particularly bad.

When you come to Melihovo bring Lika with you.

To HIS BROTHER MIHAIL.

PETERSBURG,
October 18, 1896.

The play has fallen flat, and come down with a
crash. There was an oppressive strained feeling of
disgrace and bewilderment in the theatre. The
actors played abominably stupidly. The moral of it
is, one ought not to write plays.

340 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

To A. S. SUVORIN.

MELIHOVO,
October 22, 1896

In your last letter (of October 18) you three times
call me womanish, and say that I was in a funk. Why
this libel? After the performance I had supper at
Romanov's. On my word of honour. Then I went
to bed, slept soundly, and next day went home with-
out uttering a sound of complaint. If I had been
in a funk I should have run from editor to editor and
actor to actor, should have nervously entreated them
to be considerate, should nervously have inserted
useless coirections and should have spent two or
three weeks in Petersburg fussing over my "Seagull,"
in excitement, in a cold perspiration, in lamenta-
tion. . . . When you were with me the night after
the performance you told me yourself that it would
be the best thing for me to go away; and next morn-
ing I got a letter from you to say good-bye. How
did I show funk? I acted as coldly and reason-
ably as a man who has made an offer, received a re-
fusal, and has nothing left but to go. Yes, my vanity
was stung, but you know it was not a bolt from
the blue; I was expecting a failure, and was pre-
pared for it, as I warned you with perfect sincerity
beforehand.

When I got home I took a dose of castor oil, and
had a cold bath, and now I am ready to write another
play. I no longer feel exhausted and irritable, and
am not afraid that Davydov and Jean will come to
me and talk about the play. I agree with your cor-
rections, and a thousand thanks for them. Only

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 341

please don't regret that you were not at the rehearsals.
You know there was in reality only one rehearsal, at
which one could make out nothing. One could not
see the play at all through the loathsome acting.

I have got a telegram from Potapenko "A co-
lossal success." I have had a letter from Mile.
Vesehtsky (Mikuhtch) whom I don't know. She
expresses her sympathy in a tone as if one of my
family were dead. It's really quite inappropriate;
that's all nonsense, though.

My sister is delighted with you and Anna Ivanovna,
and I am inexpressibly glad of it, for I love your
family like my own. She hastened home from
Petersburg, possibly imagining that I would hang
myself. . , .

To E. M. S.

MEOHOVO,
November, 1896.

If, honoured "One of the Audience," you are
wilting of the first performance, then allow oh,
allow me to doubt your sincerity. You hasten to
pour healing balsam on the author's wounds, sup-
posing that, under the circumstances, that is more
necessaiy and better than sincerity; you are kind,
very kind, and it does credit to your heart. At the
first performance I did not see all, but what I did see
was dingy, grey, dismal and wooden. I did not dis-
tribute the parts and was not given new scenery.
There were only two rehearsals, the actors did not
know their parts and the result was a general
panic and utter depression; even Madame Kom-
missarzhevsky's acting was not up to much, though

342 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

at one of the rehearsals she acted marvellously, so
that people sitting in the stalls wept with bowed
heads.

In any ease I am grateful and very, very much
touched. All my plays are being printed, and as
soon as they are ready I shall send you a copy. . . .

To A. F. KONI.

MELIHOVO,
November 11, 1896.

You cannot imagine how your letter rejoiced me.
I saw from the front only the two first acts of my
play. Afterwards I sat behind the scenes and felt
the whole time that "The Seagull" was a failure.
After the performance that night and next day, I
was assured that I had hatched out nothing but
idiots, that my play was clumsy from the stage point
of view, that it was not clever, that it was unin-
telligible, even senseless, and so on and so on. You
can imagine my position it was a collapse such as
I had never dreamed of ! I felt ashamed and vexed,
and I went away from Petersburg full of doubts of
all sorts. I thought that if I had written and put
on the stage a play so obviously brimming over with
monstrous defects, I had lost all instinct and that,
therefore, my machinery must have gone wrong for
good. After I had reached home, they wrote to me
from Petersburg that the second and third perform-
ances were a success; several letters, some signed,
some anonymous, came praising the play and abusing
the critics. I read them with pleasure, but still I
felt vexed and ashamed, and the idea forced itself
upon me that if kind-hearted people thought it was

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 343

necessary to comfort me, it meant that I was in a
bad way. But your letter has acted upon me in a
most definite way. I have known you a long time, I
have a deep respect for you, and I believe in you more
than in all the critics taken together you felt that
when you wrote your letter, and that is why it is so
excellent and convincing. My mind is at rest now,
and I can think of the play and the performance with-
out loathing. Kommissarzhevskaia is a wonderful
actress. At one of the rehearsals many people
were moved to tears as they looked at her, and said

, that she was the first actress in Russia to-day; but

\ at the first performance she was affected by the gen-

eral attitude of hostility to my "Seagull," and was,

*-as it were, intimidated by it and lost her voice. Our
press takes a cold tone to her that doesn't do
justice to her merits, and I am sorry for her. Allow
me to thank you with all my heart for your letter.
Believe me, I value the feelings that prompted you
to write it far more than I can express in words, and
the sympathy you call "unnecessary" at the end
of your letter I shall never never forget, whatever
happens.

To V. I. NEMIROVITCH-DANTCHENKO.

MELIHOVO,
November 26, 1896.

DEAR FRIEND,

I am answering the chief substance of your
letter the question why we so rarely talk of senous
subjects. When people are silent, it is because they
have nothing to talk about or because they are ill at
ease. What is there to talk about? We have no

344 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

politics, we have neither public life nor club life,
nor even a life of the streets; our civic existence is
poor, monotonous, burdensome, and uninteresting
and to talk is as boring as corresponding with L.
You say that we are literary men, and that of itself
makes our life a rich one. Is that so? We are
stuck in our profession up to our ears, it has gradually
isolated us from the external world, and the upshot
of it is that we have little free time, little money,
few books, we read little and reluctantly, we hear lit-
tle, we rarely go anywhere. Should we talk about
literature? . . . But we have talked about it
already. Every year it's the same thing again and
again, and all we usually say about literature may
be reduced to discussing who write better, and who
write worse. Conversations upon wider and more
general topics never catch on, because when you have
tundras and Esquimaux all round you, general ideas,
being so inappropriate to the reality, quickly lose
shape and slip away like thoughts of eternal bliss.
Should we talk of personal life? Yes, that may
sometimes be interesting and we might perhaps talk
about it; but there again we are constrained, we are
reserved and insincere: we are restrained by an
instinct of self-preservation and we are afraid. We
are afraid of being overheard by some uncultured
Esquimaux who does not like us, and whom we don't
like either. I personally am afraid that my acquaint-
ance, N., whose cleverness attracts us, will hold forth
with raised finger, in every railway carriage and
every house about me, settling the question why I
became so intimate with X. while I was beloved by
Z. I am afraid of our morals, I am afraid of our
ladies. ... In short, for our silence, for the

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 345

frivolity and dulness of our conversations, don't
blame yourself or me, blame what the critics call
"the age," blame the climate, the vast distances,
what you will, and let circumstances go on their
own fateful, relentless course, hoping for a better
future.

To A. S. SUVORIN.

MELIHOVO,
January 11, 1897.

We are having a census. They have served out to
the numerators detestable inkpots, detestable clumsy
badges like the labels of a brewery, and portfolios
into which the census forms will not fit giving the
effect of a sword that won't go into its sheath. It
is a disgrace. From early morning I go from hut to
hut, and knock my head in the low doorways which
I can't get used to, and as ill-luck will have it my
head aches hellishly; I have migraine and influenza.
In one hut a little girl of nine years old, boarded
out from the foundling hospital, wept bitterly because
all the other little girls in the hut were Mihailovnas
while she was called Lvovna after her godfather.
I said call yourself Mihailovna. They were all
highly delighted, and began thanking me. That's
what's called making friends with the Mammon of
Unrighteousness .

The "Journal of Surgery" has been sanctioned by
the Censor. We are beginning to bring it out. Be
so good as to do us a service have the enclosed
advertisement printed on your front page and charge
it to my account. The journal will be a very good
one, and this advertisement can lead to nothing but

346 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

unmistakable and solid benefit. It's a great benefit,
you know, to cut off people's legs.

While we are on medical topics a remedy for
cancer has been found. For almost a year past,
thanks to a Russian doctor Denisenko, they have been
trying the juice of the celandine, and one reads of
astonishing results. Cancer is a terrible unbearable
disease, the death from it is agonizing; you can im-
agine how pleasant it is for a man initiated into the
secrets of ^Esculapius to read of such results. . . .

Moscow,
February 8, 1897.

The census is over. I was pretty sick of the busi-
ness, as I had both to enumerate and to write till my
fingers ached, and to give lectures to fifteen numer-
ators. The numerators worked excellently, with a
pedantic exactitude almost absurd. On the other
hand the Zemsky Natchalniks, to whom the census
was entrusted in the districts, behaved disgustingly.
They did nothing, understood little, and at the most
difficult moments used to report themselves sick.
The best of them turned out to be a man who drinks
and draws the long bow a la Hlestakov * but was all
the same a character, if only from the point of view of
comedy, while the others were colourless beyond
words, and it was annoying beyond words to have any-
thing to do with them.

I am in Moscow at the Great Moscow Hotel. I
am staying a short time, ten days, and then going
home. The whole of Lent and the whole of April
after it, I shall have to be busy again with carpenters

* A character in Gogol's "Inspector General." Translator's
Note.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 347

nd so on. I am building a school again A depu-
ition came to me from the peasants begging me for
, and I had not the courage to refuse. The Zem-
tvo is giving a thousand roubles, the peasants have
ollected three hundred, and that is all, while the
chool will not cost less than three thousand. So
gain I shall have all the summer to be thinking about
aoney, and scraping it together here and there. Al-
ogether life in the country is full of work and
are. . . .

The police have made a raid upon Tchertkov, the
veil-known Tolstoy an, have carried off all that the
folstoyans had collected relating to the Duhobors
jid sectarians and so all at once as though by magic
Jl evidence against Pobyedonostsev and his angels
ias vanished. Goremykin called upon Tchertkov's
nother and said: "Your son must make the choice
ather the Baltic Province where Prince Hilkov is al-
eady living in exile, or a foreign country." Tchert-
tov has chosen London.

He is setting off on the thirteenth of February. L.
S[. Tolstoy has gone to Petersburg to see him off;
md yesterday they sent his winter overcoat after him.
\ great many are going to see him off, even Sytin,
md I am sorry that I cannot do the same. I don't
cherish tender sentiments for Tchertkov, but the way
le has been treated fills me with intense, intense in-
dignation. . . .

Moscow,

April 1, 1897

The doctors have diagnosed tuberculosis in the
upper part of the lungs, and have ordered me to
change my manner of life. I understand their
diagnosis but I don't understand their prescription,

348 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

because it is almost impossible. They tell me I must
live in the country, but you know living permanently
in the country involves continual worry with peasants,
with animals, with elementary forces of all kinds, and
to escape from worries and anxieties m the country
is as difficult as to escape burns in hell. But still I
will try to change my life as far as possible, and have
already, through Masha, announced that I shall give
up medical practice in the country. Tins will be at
the same time a great relief and a great deprivation
to me. I shall drop all public duties in the district,
shall buy a dressing-gown, bask in the sun, and eat a
great deal, They tell me to eat six times a day and
are indignant with me for eating, as they think, very
little. I am forbidden to talk much, to swim, and so
on, and so on.

Except my lungs, all my organs were found to be
healthy. Hitherto I fancied I drank just so much
as not to do harm; now it turns out on investigation
that I was drinking less than I was entitled to. What
a pity!

The author of "Ward No. 6" has been moved from
Ward No. 16 to Ward No. 14. There is plenty of
room here, two windows, lighting a la Potapenko,
three tables. There is very little haemorrhage.
After the evening when Tolstoy was here (we talked
for a long time) at four o'clock m the morning I had
violent hemorrhage again.

Melihovo is a healthy place; it stands exactly on
a watershed, on high ground, so that there is never
fever or diphtheria in it. They have decided, after
general consultation, that I am not to go away any-
where but to go on living at Melihovo. I must only
arrange the house somewhat more comfortably. . . .

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 349

Moscow,
April 7, 1897.

. . . You write that my ideal is laziness. No, it is
not laziness. I despise laziness as I despise weak-
ness and lack of mental and moral energy. I was not
talking of laziness but of leisure, and I did not say
leisure was an ideal but only one of the essential con-
ditions of personal happiness.

If the experiments with Koch's new serum give
favourable results, I shall go of course to Berlin.
Feeding is absolutely no use to me. Here for the
last fortnight they have been feeding me zealously,
but it's no use, I have not gained weight.

I ought to get married. Perhaps a cross wife
would cut down the number of my visitors by at
least a half. Yesterday they were coming all day
long, it was simply awful. They came two at a time
and each one begs me not to speak and at the same
time asks me questions. . . .

To A. I. ERTEL.

MELIHOVO,
April 17, 1897.

DEAR FRIEND ALEXANDK IVANOVITCH,

I am now at home. For a fortnight before
Easter I was lying in Ostroumov's clinic and was
spitting blood. The doctor diagnosed tuberculosis
in the lungs. I feel splendid, nothing aches, nothing
is uneasy inside, but the doctors have forbidden me
vinum, movement, and conversation, they have or-
dered me to eat a great deal, and forbidden me to
piactise -'and I feel as it were dreary.

350 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

I hear nothing about the People's Theatre. At the
congress it was spoken of apathetically, without inter-
est, and the circle that had undertaken to write its
constitution and set to work have evidently cooled off
a little. It is due to the spring, I suppose. The only
one of the circle I saw was Goltsev, and I had not time
to talk to him about the theatre.

There is nothing new. A dead calm in literature.
In the editor's offices they are drinking tea and cheap
wine, drinking it without relish as they walk about,
evidently from having nothing to do. Tolstoy is
writing a little book about Art. He came to see me
in the clinic, and said that he had flung aside his novel
"Resurrection" as he did not like it, and was writing
only about Art, and had read sixty books about Art.
His idea is not a new one; all intelligent old men in
all the ages have sung the same tune in different keys.
Old men have always been prone to see the end of the
world, and have always declared that morality was de-
generating to the uttermost point, that Art was grow-
ing shallow and wearing thin, that people were grow-
ing feebler, and so on, and so on.

Lyov Nikolaevitch wants to persuade us in his little
book that at the present time Art has entered upon its
final phase, that it is in a blind alley, from which it
has no outlet (except retreat) .

I am doing nothing, I feed the sparrows with hemp-
seed and prune a rose-tree a day. After my pruning,
the roses flower magnificently. I am not looking
after the farming.

Keep well, dear Alexandr Ivanovitch, thank you for
your letter and friendly sympathy. Write to me for
the sake of my infirmity, and don't blame me too much
for my carelessness in correspondence.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 351

In future I am going to try and answer your letters
as soon as I have read them.
Warmest greetings.

To SUVORIN.

MELIHOVO,

July 12, 1897.

... I am reading Maeterlinck, I have read his
"Les Aveugles," "L'Intrus," and am reading
"Aglavaine et Selysette." They are all strange
wonderful things, but they make an immense impres-
sion, and if I had a theatre I should certainly stage
"Les Aveugles." There is, by the way, a magnifi-
cent scenic effect in it, with the sea and a lighthouse
in the distance. The public is semi-idiotic, but one
might avoid the play's failing by writing the contents
of the play in brief, of course on the programme,
saying the play is the work of Maeterlinck, a Belgian
author and decadent, and that what happens in it
is that an old man, who leads about some blind
men, has died in silence and that the blind men, not
knowing this, are sitting and waiting for his re-
turn. . . .

To MADAME AVILOV.

NICE,
October 6, 1897.

. . . You complain that my heroes are gloomy
alas! that's not my fault. This happens apart
from my will, and when I write it does not seem to me
that I am writing gloomily; in any case, as I work I
am always in excellent spirits. It has been observed

352 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

that gloomy, melancholy people always write cheer-
fully, while those who enjoy life put their depression
into their writings. And I am a man who enjoys life ;
the first thirty years of my life I have lived as they say
in pleasure and content. . . .

To F. D. BATYUSHKOV.

NICE,
December 15, 1897

... In one of your letters you expressed a desire
that I should send you an international story, taking
for my subject something from the life here. Such
a story I can write only in Russia from reminiscences.
I can only write from reminiscences, and I have never
written directly from Nature. I have let my memory
sift the subject, so that only what is important or
typical is left in it as in a filter. . . .

To A. S. SUVORIN.

NICE,
January 4, 1898.

. . . Judging from the extract printed in Novoye
Vremya, Tolstoy's article on Art does not seem in-
teresting. All that is old. He says about Art that
it is decrepit, that it has got into a blind alley, that
it is not what it ought to be, and so on, and so on.
That's just like saying the desire to eat and drink
has grown old, has outlived its day, and is not what
it ought to be. Of course hunger is an old story, in
the desire to eat we have got into a blind alley, but
still eating is necessary, and we shall go on eating
however the philosophers and irate old men moral-
ise. . . .

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 353

To F. D. BATYUSHKOV.

NICE,
January 28, 1898

. . . We talk of nothing here but Zola and Drey-
us. The immense majority of educated people are
m Zola's side and believe that Dreyfus is innocent,
jola has gained immensely in public esteem ; his let-
ers of protest are like a breath of fresh air, and every
frenchman has felt that, thank God! there is still
ustice in the world, and thai if an innocent man is
condemned there is still someone to champion him.
The French papers are extremely interesting while
he Russian are worthless. Novoye Vremya is simply
oathsome. . . .

To A. S. SUVORIN.

NICE,
February 6, 1898.

. . . You write that you are annoyed with Zola,
and here everyone has a feeling as though a new,
better Zola had arisen. In his trial he has been
cleansed as though in turpentine from grease-spots,
and now shines before the French in his true bril-
liance. There is a purity and moral elevation that
was not suspected in him. You should follow the
whole scandal from the very beginning. The deg-
radation of Dreyfus, whether it was just or not, made
on all (you were of the number I remember) a pain-
ful and depressing impression. It was noticed that
at the time of the sentence Dreyfus behaved like a
decent well- disciplined officer, while those present at
the sentence, the journalists for instance, shouted at

354 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

him, "Hold your tongue, Judas," that is, behaved
badly and indecently. Everyone came back from
the sentence dissatisfied and with a troubled con-
science. Dreyfus' counsel Demange, an honest man,
who even during the preliminary stages of the trial
felt that something shifty was being done behind the
scenes, was particularly dissatisfied and then the
experts who, to convince themselves that they had
not made a mistake, kept talking of nothing but
Dreyfus, of his being guilty, and kept wandering all
over Pans! . . .

Of the experts one turned out to be mad, the author
of a monstrously absurd project; two were eccentric
creatures.

People could not help talking of the Intelligence
Department at the War Office, that military consistory
which is employed in hunting for spies and reading
other people's letters; it began to be said that the
head of that Department, Sandhen, was suffering
from progressive paralysis; Paty de Clam has shown
himself to be something after the style of Tausch of
Berlin; Picquart suddenly took his departure mys-
teriously, causing a lot of talk. All at once a series
of gross judicial blunders came to light. By degrees
people became convinced that Dreyfus had been
condemned on the strength of a secret document,
which had been shown neither to the accused man
nor his defending counsel, and decent law-abiding
people saw in this a fundamental breach of justice.
If the latter were the work not simply of Wilhelm,
but of the centre of the solar system, it ought to have
been shown to Demange. All sorts of guesses were
made as to the contents of this letter, the most im-
possible stories circulated. Dreyfus was an officer,

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 355

the military were suspect; Dreyfus was a Jew, the
Jews were suspect. People began talking about mil-
itarism, about the Jews. Such utterly disreputable
people as Drumont held up their heads; httle by
little they stirred up a regular pother on a substratum
of anti-semitism, on a substratum that smelt of the
shambles. When something is wrong with us we
look for the causes outside ourselves, and readily find
them. "It's the Frenchman's nastiness, it's the
Jews', it's Wilhelm's." Capital, brimstone, the free-
masons, the Syndicate, the Jesuits they are all
bogeys, but how they relieve our uneasiness ! They
are of course a bad sign. Since the French have
begun talking about the Jews, about the Syndicate,
it shows they are feeling uncomfortable, that there
is a worm gnawing at them, that they feel the need
of these bogeys to soothe their t>ver-excited con-
science.

Then this Esterhazy, a duellist, in the style of
Turgenev's duellists, an insolent ruffian, who had
long been an object of suspicion, and was not re-
spected by his comrades; the striking resemblance of
his handwriting with that of the bordereau, the
Uhlan's letters, his threats which for some reason he
does not carry out; finally the judgment, utterly mys-
terious, strangely deciding that the bordereau was
written in Esterhazy's handwriting but not by his
hand' ... And the gas has been continually ac-
cumulating, there has come to be a feeling of acute
tension, of overwhelming oppression. The fighting
in the court was a purely nervous manifestation,
simply the hysterical result of that tension, and Zola s
letter and his trial are a manifestation of the same
kind What would you have? The best people,

356 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

always in advance of the nation, were bound to be the
first to raise an agitation and so it has been. The
first to speak was Scherer-Kestner, of whom French-
men who know him intimately (according to Kova-
levsky) say that he is a "sword-blade," so spotless
and without blemish is he. The second is Zola, and
now he is being tried.

Yes, Zola is not Voltaire, and we are none of us
Voltaires, but there are in life conjunctions of circum-
stances when the reproach that we are not Voltaires
is least of all appropriate. Think of Korolenko, who
defended the Multanovsky natives and saved them
from penal servitude. Dr. Haas is not a Voltaire
either, and yet his wonderful life has been well spent
up to the end.

I am, well acquainted with the case from the
stenographers' report, which is utterly different from
what is in the newspapers, and I have a clear view
of Zola. The chief point is that he is sincere that
is, he bases his judgments simply on what he sees, and
not on phantoms like the others. And sincere peo-
ple can be mistaken, no doubt of it, but such mistakes
do less harm than calculated insincerity, prejudg-
ments, or political considerations. Let Dreyfus be
guilty, and Zola is still right, since it is the duty of
writers not to accuse, not to prosecute, but to cham-
pion even the guilty once they have been condemned
and are enduring punishment. I shall be told:
"What of the political position? The interests of
the State?" But great writers and artists ought to
take part in politics only so far as they have to pro-
tect themselves from politics. There are plenty of
accusers, prosecutors, and gendarmes without them,
and in any case, the role of Paul suits them better

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 357

than that of Saul. Whatever the verdict may be,
Zola will anyway experience a vivid delight after the
trial, his old age will be a fine old age, and he will
die with a conscience at peace, or at any rate greatly
solaced. The French are very sick. They clutch at
every word of comfort and at every genuine reproach
coming to them from outside. That is why Bern-
stein's letter and our Zakrevsky's article (which was
read here in the Novosti) have had such a great suc-
cess here, and why they are so disgusted by abuse
of Zola, such as the gutter press, which they despise,
flings at him every day. However neurotic Zola
may be, still he stands before the court of French
common sense, and the French love him for it and
are proud of him, even though they do applaud the
Generals who, in the simplicity of their hearts, scare
them first with the honour of the army, then with
war. . . .

To His BROTHER ALEXANDR.

NICE,
February 23, 1898.

. . . Novoye Vremya has behaved simply abomin-
ably about the Zola case. The old man and I have
exchanged letters on the subject (in a tone of great
moderation, however), and have both dropped the
subject.

I don't want to write and I don't want his letters,
in which he keeps justifying the tactlessness of his
paper by saying he loves the military: I don't want
them because I have been thoroughly sick of it all
for a long time past. I love the military too, but I

358 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

would not if I had a newspaper allow the cactuses
to print Zola's novel for nothing in the Supplement,
while they pour dirty water over this same Zola in the
paper and what for? For what not one of the cac-
tuses has ever known for a noble impulse and moral
purity. And in any case to abuse Zola when he is
on his trial that is unworthy of literature. . . .

To HIS BROTHER MIHAIL.

YALTA,
October 26, 1898.

... I am buying a piece of land in Yalta and am
going to build so as to have a place in which to spend
the winters. The prospect of continual wandering
with hotel rooms, hotel porters, chance cooking, and
so on, and so on, alarms my imagination. Mother
will spend the winter with me. There is no winter
here; it's the end of October, but the roses and other
flowers are blooming freely, the trees are green and
it is warm.

There is a great deal of water. Nothing will be
needed apart from the house, no outbuildings of any
sort; it will all be under one roof. The coal, wood
and everything will be in the basement. The hens
lay the whole year round, and no special house is
needed for them, an enclosure is enough. Close by
there is a baker's shop and the bazaar, so that it will
be very cosy for Mother and very convenient. By
the way, there are chanterelles and boletuses to be
gathered all the autumn, and that will be an amuse-
ment for Mother. I am not doing the building my-
self, the architect is doing it all. The houses will be

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 359

ready by April. The grounds, for a town house, are
considerable. There will be a garden and flower-
beds, and a vegetable garden. The railway will come
to Yalta next year. . . .

As for getting married, upon which you are so
urgent what am I to say to you? To marry is
interesting only for love; to marry a girl simply be-
cause she is nice is like buying something one does
not want at the bazaar solely because it is of good
quality.

The most important screw in family life is love,
sexual attraction, one flesh, all the rest is dreary and
cannot be reckoned upon, however cleverly we make
our calculations. So the point is not in the girl's
being nice but in her being loved; putting it off as
you see counts for little. . . .

My "Uncle Vanya" is being done all over the prov-
ince, and everywhere with success. So one never
knows where one will gain and where one will lose;
I had not reckoned on that play at all. . . .

To GORKY.

YALTA,
December 3, 1898.

Your last letter has given me great pleasure. I
thank you with all my heart. "Uncle Vanya" was
written long, long ago; I have never seen it on the
stage. Of late years it has often been produced at
provincial theatres. I feel cold about my plays as a
rule; I gave up the theatre long ago, and feel no
desire now to write for the stage.

You ask what is my opinion of your stories. My
opinion ? The talent is unmistakable and it is a real,

360 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

great talent. For instance, in the story "In the
Steppe," it is expressed with extraordinary vigom,
and I actually felt a pang of envy that it was not I
who had written it. You are an artist, a clever man,
you feel superbly, you are plastic that is, when
you describe a thing you see it and you touch it with
your hands. That is real art. There is my opinion
for you, and I am very glad I can express it to you.
I am, I repeat, very glad, and if we could meet and
talk for an hour or two you would be convinced of
my high appreciation of you and of the hopes I am
building on your gifts.

Shall I speak now of defects? But that is not
so easy. To speak of the defects of a talent is like
speaking of the defects of a great tree growing in
the garden; what is chiefly in question, you see, is
not the tree itself but the tastes of the man who is
looking at it. Is not that so ?

I will begin by saying that to my mind you have
not enough restraint. You are like a spectator at
the theatre who expresses his transports with so
little restraint that he prevents himself and other
people from listening. This lack of restraint is par-
ticularly felt in the descriptions of nature with which
you interrupt your dialogues; when one reads those
descriptions one wishes they were more compact,
shorter, put into two or three lines. The frequent
mention of tenderness, whispering, velvetiness, and
so on, give those descriptions a rhetorical and
monotonous character and they make one feel cold
and almost exhaust one. The lack of restraint is
felt also in the descriptions of women ("Malva,"
"On the Raft") and love scenes. It is not vigour,
not breadth of touch, but just lack of restraint. Then

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 361

there is the frequent use of words quite unsuitable in
stories of your type. "Accompaniment," "disc,"
"harmony," such words spoil the effect. You often
talk of waves. There is a strained feeling and a sort
of circumspection in your descriptions of educated
people; that is not because you have not observed
educated people sufficiently, you know them, but
you don't seem to know from what side to approach
them.

How old are you? I don't know you, I don't
know where you came from or who you are, but it
seems to me that while you are still young you ought
to leave Nizhni and spend two or three years rubbing
shoulders with literature and literary people; not to
learn to crow like the rest of us and to sharpen your
wits, but to take the final plunge head first into litera-
ture and to grow to love it. Besides, the provinces
age a man early. Korolenko, Potapenko, Mamin,
Ertel, are first-rate men; you would perhaps at first
feel their company rather boring, but in a year or
two you would grow used to them and appreciate
them as they deserve, and their society would more
than repay you for the disagreeableness and incon-
venience of life in the capital. . . .

YALTA,
January 3, 1899.

. . . Apparently you have misunderstood me a
little. I did not write to you of coarseness of style,
but only of the incongruity of foreign, not genuinely
Russian, or rarely used words. In other authors such

362 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

words as, for instance, "fatalistically," pass unno-
ticed, hut your things are musical, harmonious, and
every crude touch jars fearfully. Of course it is a
question of taste, and perhaps this is only a sign of
excessive fastidiousness in me, or the conservatism
of a man who has adopted definite habits for himself
long ago. I am resigned to "a collegiate assessor"
and "a captain of the second rank," in descriptions,
but "flirt" and "champion" when they occur in de-
scriptions excite repulsion in me.

Are you self-educated? In your stories you are
completely an - artist and at the same time an
"educated" man in the truest sense.

Nothing is less characteristic of you than coarse-
ness, you are clever and subtle and delicate in your
feelings. Your best things are "In the Steppe,"
and "On the Raft," did I write to you about that?
They are splendid things, masterpieces, they show
the artist who has passed through a very good school.
I don't think that I am mistaken. The only defect
is the lack of restraint, the lack of grace. When a
man spends the least possible number of movements
over some definite action, that is grace. One is con-
scious of superfluity in your expenditure.

The descriptions of nature are the work of an artist;
you are a real landscape painter. Only the frequent
personification (anthropomorphism) when the sea
breathes, the sky gazes, the steppe barks, nature whis-
pers, speaks, mourns, and so on such metaphors
make your descriptions somewhat monotonous,
sometimes sweetish, sometimes not clear; beauty
and expressiveness in nature are attained only by
simplicity, by such simple phrases as "The sun set,"
"It was dark," "It began to rain," and so on

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 363

and that simplicity is characteristic of you in the
highest degree, more so perhaps than of any other
writer. . . .

To A. S. SUVORIN.

YALTA,
January 17, 1899.

... I have been reading Tolstoy's son's story:
"The Folly of the Mir." The construction of the
story is poor, indeed it would have been better to
write it simply as an article, but the thought is
treated with justice and passion. I am against the
Commune myself. There is sense in the Commune
when one has to deal with external enemies who make
frequent invasions, and with wild animals; but now
it is a crowd artificially held together, like a crowd
of convicts. They will tell us Russia is an agricul-
tural country. That is so, but the Commune has
nothing to do with that, at any rate at the present
time. The commune exists by husbandry, but once
husbandry begins to pass into scientific agriculture
the commune begins to crack at every seam, as the
commune and culture are not compatible ideas. Our
national drunkenness and profound ignorance are, by
the way, sins of the commune system. . . .

To HIS BROTHER MIHAIL.

YALTA,
February 6, 1899

. . . Being bored, I am reading "The Book of my
Life" by Bishop Porfiry. This passage about war
occurs in it:

364 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

"Standing armies in time of peace are locusts de-
vouring the people's bread and leaving a vile stench
in society, while in time of war they are artificial fight-
ing machines, and when they grow and develop, fare-
well to freedom, security, and national glory! . . .
They are the lawless defenders of unjust and partial
laws, of privilege and of tyranny." . . .

That was written in the forties. . . .

To I. I. ORLOV.

YALTA,
February 22, 1899.

... In your letter there is a text from Scripture.
To your complaint in regard to the tutor and failures
of all sorts I will reply by another text: 'Tut not thy
trust in princes nor in any sons of man" . . . and I
recall another expression in regard to the sons of
man, those in particular who so annoy you : they are
the sons of their age.

Not the tutor but the whole educated class that
is to blame, my dear sir. While the young men and
women are students they are a good honest set, they
are our hope, they are the future of Russia, but no
sooner do those students enter upon independent life
and become grown up than our hope and the future
of Russia vanishes in smoke, and all that is left in
the filter is doctors owning house property, hungry
government clerks, and thieving engineers. Re-
member that Katkov, Pobyedonostsev, Vishnegrad-
sky, were nurselings of the Universities, that they
were our Professors not military despots, but pro-
fessors, luminaries. ... I don't believe in our
educated class, which is hypocritical, false; hysteri-

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 365

cal, badly educated and indolent. I don't believe
in it even when it's suffering and complaining, for
its oppressors come from its own entrails. I believe
in individual people, I see salvation in individual
personalities scattered here and there all over Rus-
sia educated people or peasants they have
strength though they are few. No prophet is
honoured in his own country, but the individual per-
sonalities of whom I am speaking play an unnoticed
part in society, they are not domineering, but their
work can be seen; anyway, science is advancing and
advancing, social self-consciousness is growing,
moral questions begin to take an uneasy character,
and so on, and so on and all this is being done in
spite of the prosecutors, the engineers, and the tutors,
in spite of the intellectual class en masse and in spite
of everything. . . .

To MADAME AVILOV.

YALTA,
March 9, 1899

I shall not be at the writers' congress. In the
autumn I shall be in the Crimea or abroad that is,
of course, if I am alive and free. I am going to spend
the whole summer on my own place in the Serpuhov
district.*

By the way, in what district of the Tula province
have you bought your estate? For the first two
years after buying an estate one has a hard time, at
moments it is very bad indeed, but by degrees one
is led to Nirvana, by sweet habit. I bought an es-
tate and mortgaged it, I had a very hard time the

* Melihovo.

366 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

first years (famine, cholera). Afterwards every-
thing went well, and now it is pleasant to remember
that I have somewhere near the Oka a nook of my
own. I live in peace with the peasants, they never
steal anything from me, and when I walk through the
village the old women smile and cross themselves.
I use the formal address to all except children, and
never shout at them; hut what has done most to build
up our good relations is medicine. You will be
happy on your estate, only please don't listen to any-
one's advice and gloomy prognostications, and don't
at first be disappointed, or form an opinion about the
peasants. The peasants behave sullenly and not gen-
uinely to all new-comers, and especially so in the
Tula province. There is indeed a saying: "He's a
good man though he is from Tula."

So here's something like a sermon for you, you see,
madam. Are you satisfied?

Do you know L. N. Tolstoy? Will your estate
be far from Tolstoy's ? If it is near I shall envy you.
I like Tolstoy very much.

Speaking of new writers, you throw Melshin in
with a whole lot. That's not right. Melshin stands
apart. He is a great and unappreciated writer, an
intelligent, powerful writer, though perhaps he will
not write more than he has wntten already. Kupnn
I have not read at all. Gorky I like, but of late he
has taken to writing rubbish, revolting rubbish, so
that I shall soon give up reading him. "Humble
People" is good, though one could have done
without Buhvostov, whose presence brings into the
story an element of strain, of tiresomeness and
even falsity. Korolenko is a delightful writer. He
is loved and with good reason. Apart from

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 367

all the rest there is sobriety and purity in
him.

You ask whether I am sorry for Suvorin. Of
course I am. He is paying heavily for his mistakes.
But I'm not at all sorry for those who are surrounding
him. . . .

To GORKY.

Moscow,
April 25, 1899.

. . . The day before yesterday I was at L. N.
Tolstoy's; he praised you very highly and said that
you were "a remarkable writer." He likes your
"The Fair" and "In the Steppe," and does not like
"Malva." He said: "You can invent anything you
like, but you can't invent psychology, and in Gorky
one comes across just psychological inventions: he
describes what he has never felt." So much for you !'
I said that when you were next in Moscow we would'
go together to see him.

When will you be in Moscow ? On Thursday there
will be a private performance for me of "The
Seagull." If you come to Moscow I will give you a
seat. . . .

From Petersburg I get painful letters, as it were
from the damned,* and it's painful to me as I don't
know what to answer, how to behave. Yes, life
when it is not a psychological invention is a difficult
business. . . .

* From Suvorin.

368 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

To 0. L. KNIPPER.

YALTA,
September 30, 1899.

At your command I hasten to answer your letter
in which you ask me about Astrov's last scene with
Elena.

You write that Astrov addresses Elena in that
scene like the most ardent lover, "clutches at his feel-
ing like a drowning man at a straw."

But that's not right, not right at all ! Astrov likes
Elena, she attracts him by her beauty; but in the
last act he knows already that nothing will come of it,
and he talks to her in that scene in the same tone as
of the heat in Africa, and kisses her quite casually, to
pass the time. If Astrov takes that scene violently,
the whole mood of the fourth act quiet and des-
pondent is lost. . . .

To G. I. ROSSOLIMO.

YALTA,
October 11, 1899.

. . . Autobiography? I have a disease Auto-
biographophobia. To read any sort of details about
myself, and still more to write them for print, is a
veritable torture to me. On a separate sheet I send
a few facts, very bald, but I can do no more. . . .

I, A. P. Chekhov, was born on the 17th of Jan-
uary, 1860, at Taganrog. I was educated first in the
Greek School near the church of Tsar Constantine;
then in the Taganrog high school. In 1879 1 entered
the Moscow University in the Faculty of Medicine.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 369

I had at the time only a slight idea of the Facul-
ties in general, and chose the Faculty of Medicine
I don't remember on what grounds, but did not re-
gret my choice afterwards. I began in my first year
to publish stories in the weekly journals and news-
papers, and these literary pursuits had, early in the
eighties, acquired a permanent professional charac-
ter. In 1888 I took the Pushkin prize. In 1890
I travelled to the Island of Sahalin, to write after-
wards a book upon our penal colony and prisons
there. Not counting reviews, feuilletons, para-
graphs, and all that I have written from day to day
for the newspapers, which it would be difficult now to
seek out and collect, I have, during my twenty years
of literary work, published more than three hundred
signatures of print, of tales, and novels. I have also
written plays for the stage.

I have no doubt that the study of medicine has
had an important influence on my literary work; it
has considerably enlarged the sphere of my observa-
tion, has enriched me with knowledge the true value
of which for me as a writer can only be understood by
one who is himself a doctor. It has also had a guid-
ing influence, and it is probably due to my close as-
sociation with medicine that I have succeeded in
avoiding many mistakes.

Familiarity with the natural sciences and with
scientific method has always kept me on my guard,
and I have always tried where it was possible to be
consistent with the facts of science, and where it was
impossible I have preferred not to write at all. I
may observe in passing that the conditions of artistic
creation do not always admit of complete harmony
with the facts of science. It is impossible to repre-

370 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

sent upon the stage a death from poisoning exactly
as it takes place in reality. But harmony with the
facts of science must be felt even under those condi-
tions i.e., it must be clear to the reader or spectator
that this is only due to the conditions of art, and that
he has to do with a writer who understands.

I do not belong to the class of literary men who
take up a sceptical attitude towards science; and to
the class of those who rush into everything with only
their own imagination to go upon, I should not like to
belong. . . .

To 0. L. KNIPPER.

YALTA,
October 30, 1899.

. . . You ask whether I shall be excited, but you
see I only heard properly that "Uncle Vanya" was to
be given on the twenty-sixth from your letter which
I got on the twenty-seventh. The telegrams began
coming on the evening of the twenty-seventh when I
was in bed. They send them on to me by telephone.
I woke up every time ajid ran with bare feet to the
telephone, and got very much chilled; then I had
scarcely dozed off when the bell rang again and again.
It's the first time that my own fame has kept me
awake. The next evening when I went to bed I put
my slippers and dressing-gown beside my bed, but
there were no more telegrams.

The telegrams were full of nothing but the number
of calls and the brilliant success, but there was a
subtle, almost elusive something in them from which
I could conclude that the state of mind of all of you
was not exactly of the very best. The newspapers
I have got to-day confirm my conjectures.

Yes, dear actress, ordinary medium success is not

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 371

enough now for all you artistic players : you want an
uproar, big guns, dynamite. You have been spoiled
at last, deafened by constant talk about successes,
full and not full houses: you are already poisoned
with that drug, and in another two or three years
you will be good for nothing ! So much for you !

How are you getting on? How are you feeling?
I am still in the same place, and am still the same;
I am working and planting trees.

But visitors have come, I can't go on writing.
Visitors have been sitting here for more than an hour.
They have asked for tea. They have sent for the
samovar. Oh, how dreary!

Don't forget me, and don't let your friendship for
me die away, so that we may go away together
somewhere again this summer. Good-bye for the
present. We shall most likely not meet before April.
If you would all come in the spring to Yalta, would
act here and rest that would be wonderfully artistic.
A visitor will take this letter and drop it into the post-
box. . . .

P. S. Dear actress, write for the sake of all that's
holy, I am so dull and depressed. I might be in
prison and I rage and rage. . . .

YALTA,
November 1, 1899.

I understand your mood, dear actress, I under-
stand it very well ; but yet in your place I would not
be so desperately upset. Both the part of Anna *

* In Hauptmann's "Lonely Lives."

372 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

and the play itself are not worth wasting so much
feeling and nerves over. It is an old play. It is
already out of date, and there are a great many de-
fects in it; if more than half the performers have
not fallen into the right tone, then naturally it is the
fault of the play. That's one thing, and the second
is, you must once and for all give up being worried
about successes and failures. Don't let that concern
you. It's your duty to go on working steadily day
by day, quite quietly, to be prepared for mistakes
which are inevitable, for failures in short, to do your
job as actress and let other people count the calls
before the curtain. To write or to act, and to be
conscious at the time that one is not doing the right
thing that is so usual, and for beginners so prof-
itable!

The third thing is that the director has telegraphed
that the second performance went magnificently, that
everyone played splendidly, and that he was com-
pletely satisfied. . . .

To GORKY.

YALTA,
January 2, 1900.

PRECIOUS ALEXEY MAXIMOVITCH,

I wish you a happy New Year ! How are you
getting on? How are you feeling? When are you
coming to Yalta? Write fully. I have received
the photograph, it is very good; many thanks for
it.

Thank you, too, for the trouble you have taken in
regard to our committee for assisting invalids corning
here. Send any money there is or will be to me, or

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 373

to the executive of the Benevolent Society, no matter
which.

My story (i.e., "In the Ravine") has already been
sent off to Zhizn. Did I tell you that I liked your
story "An Orphan" extremely, and sent it to
Moscow to first-rate readers? There is a certain
Professor Foht in the Medical Faculty in Moscow
who reads Slyeptsov capitally. I don't know a
Letter reader. So I have sent your "Orphan" to
him. Did I tell you how much I liked a story in your
third volume, "My Travelling Companion"? There
is the same strength in it as "In the Steppe." If I
were you, I would take the best things out of your
three volumes and republish them in one volume
at a rouble and that would be something really
remarkable for vigour and harmony. As it is,
everything seems shaken up together in the three
volumes; there are no weak things, but it leaves an
impression as though the three volumes were not the
work of one author but of seven.

Scribble me a line or two.

To 0. L. KNIPPER.

YALTA,
January 2, 1900.

My greetings, dear actress! Are you angry that
I haven't written for so long? I used to write often,
but you didn't get my letters because our common
acquaintance intercepted them in the post.

I wish you all happiness in the New Year. I really
do wish you happiness and bow down to your little
feet. Be happy, wealthy, healthy, and gay.

374 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

We are getting on pretty well, we eat a great deal,
chatter a great deal, laugh a great deal, and often
talk of you. Masha will tell you when she goes back
to Moscow how we spent Christmas.

I have not congratulated you on the success of
"Lonely Lives." I still dream that you will all
come to Yalta, that I shall see "Lonely Lives" on
the stage, and congratulate you really from my
heart. I wrote to Meierhold,* and urged him in my
letter not to be too violent in the part of a nervous
man. The immense majority of people are nervous,
you know: the greater number suffer, and a small
proportion feel acute pain; but where in streets and
in houses do you see people tearing about, leaping
up, and clutching at their heads? Suffering ought
to be expressed as it is expressed in life that is,
not by the arms and legs, but by the tone and expres-
sion; not by gesticulation, but by grace. Subtle
emotions of the soul in educated people must be
subtly expressed in an external way. You will say
stage conditions. No conditions allow falsity.

My sister tells me that you played "Anna"
exquisitely. Ah, if only the Art Theatre would
come to Yalta ! Novoye Vremya highly praised your
company. There is a change of tactics in that
quarter; evidently they are going to praise you all
even in Lent. My story, a very queer one, will be in
the February number of Zhizn. There are a great
number of characters, there is scenery too, there's
a crescent moon, there's a bittern that cries far, far
away: "Boo oo! boo oo!" like a cow shut up in a
shed. There's everything in it.

* An actor at the Art Theatre at that time playing Johannes
in Hauptmann's "Lonely Lives."

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 375

Levitan is with us. Over my fireplace he has
painted a moonlight night in the hayfield, cocks of
hay, forest in the distance, a moon reigning on high
above it all.

Well, the best of health to you, dear, wonderful
actress. I have been pining for you.

And when are you going to send me your photo-
graph? What treachery!

To A. S. SUVORIN.

YALTA,

January 8, 1900.

. . . My health is not so bad. I feel better than
I did last year, but yet the doctors won't let me leave
Yalta. I am as tired and sick of this charming town
as of a disagreeable wife. It's curing me of tuber-
culosis, but it's making me ten years older. If I
go to Nice it won't be before February. I am writ-
ing a little; not long ago I sent a long story to Zhizn.
Money is short, all I have received so far from Marks
for the plays is gone by now. . . .

If Prince Baryatinsky is to be judged by his paper,
I must own I was unjust to him, for I imagined him
veiy different from what he is. They will shut up
his paper, of course, but he will long maintain his
reputation as a good journalist. You ask me why
the Syeverny Kurier is successful? Because our
society is exhausted, hatred has turned it as rank
and rotten as grass in a bog, and it has a longing for

something fresh, free, light a desperate longing.
***** *

I often see the academician Kondakov here. We
talk of the Pushkin section of belles-lettres. As

376 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

Kondakov will take part in the elections of future
academicians, I am trying to hypnotize him, and
suggest that they should elect Barantsevitch and
Mihailovsky. The former is broken down and worn
out. He is unquestionably a literary man, is
poverty-stricken in his old age. ... An income
and rest would be the very thing for him. The
latter that is Mihailovsky would make a good
foundation for the new section, and his election would
satisfy three-quarters of the brotherhood. But my
hypnotism failed, my efforts came to nothing.
The supplementary clauses to the statute are like
Tolstoy's After-word to the Kreutzer Sonata. The
academicians have done all they can to protect
themselves from literary men, whose society shocks
them as the society of the Russian academicians
shocked the Germans. Literary men can only be
honorary academicians, and that means nothing it is
just the same as being an honorary citizen of the town
of Vyazma or Tcherepovets, there is no salary and no
vote attached. A clever way out of it! The pro-
fessors will be elected real academicians, and those
of the writers will be elected honorary academicians
who do not live in Petersburg, and so cannot
be present at the sittings and abuse the pro-
fessors.

I hear the muezzin calling in the minaret. The
Turks are very religious ; it's their fast now, they eat
nothing the whole day. They have no religious
ladies, that element which makes religion shallow
as the sand does the Volga.

You do well to print the martyr6logy of Russian
towns avoided by the extortionate railway con-
tractors. Here is what the famous author Chekhov

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 377

wrote on the subject in his story "My Life." *
Railway contractors are revengeful people; refuse
them a trifle, and they will punish you for it all your
life and it's their tradition.

Thanks for your letter, thanks for your indulgence.

TO P. I. KURKIN.

YALTA,
January 18, 1900.

DEAR PYOTR IVANOVITCH,

Thank you for your letter. I have long been
wanting to write to you, but have never had time,
under the load of business and official correspondence.
Yesterday was the 17th of January my name-day,
and the day of my election to the Academy. What-
a lot of telegrams! And what a lot of letters still
to come ! And I must answer all of them, or posterity
will accuse me of not knowing the laws of good
manners.

There is news, but I won't tell you it now (no time) ,
but later on. I am not very well. I was ailing all
yesterday. I press your hand heartily. Keep well.

TO V. M. SOBOLEVSKY.

YALTA,
January 19, 1900.

DEAR VASSILY MIHAILOVITCH,

In November I wrote a story f fully intending
to send it to Russkiya Vyedomosti, but the story
lengthened out beyond the sixteen pages, and I had
* Appended to the letter was a printed cutting
f "In the Ravine "

378 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

to send it elsewhere. Then Elpatyevsky and I
decided to send you a telegram on New Year's Eve,
but there was such a rush and a whirl that we let the
right moment slip, and now I send you my New Year
wishes. Forgive me my many transgressions. You
know how deeply I love and respect you, and if the
intervals in our correspondence are prolonged it's
merely external causes that are to blame.

I am alive and almost well. I am often ill, but not
for long at a time; and I haven't once been kept in
bed this winter, I keep about though I am ill. I am
working harder than I did last year, and I am more
bored. It's bad being without Russia in every way.
. . . All the evergreen trees look as though they
were made of tin, and one gets no joy out of them.
And one sees nothing interesting, as one has no taste
for the local life.

Elpatyevsky and Kondakov are here. The former
has run up a huge house for himself which towers
above all Yalta; the latter is going to Petersburg to
take his seat in the Academy and is glad to go.
Elpatyevsky is cheerful and hearty, always in good
spirits, goes out in all weathers, in a summer over-
coat; Kondakov is irritably sarcastic, and goes about
in a fur coat. Both often come and see me and we
speak of you.

V. A. wrote that she had bought a piece of land in
Tuapse. Oy-oy ! but the boredom there is awful, you
know. There are Tchetchentsi and scorpions, and
worst of all there are no roads, and there won't he
any for a long time. Of all warm places in Russia
the best are on the south coast of the Crimea, there
is no doubt of that, whatever they may say about the
natural beauties of the Caucasus. I have been lately

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 379

to Gurzufa, near Pushkin's rock, and admired the
view, although it rained and although I am sick to
death of views. In the Crimea it is snugger and nearer
to Russia. Let V. A. sell her place in Tuapse or make
a present of it to someone, and I will find her a bit of
the sea-front with bathing, and a bay, in the Crimea.
When you are in Vosdvizhenka give my respects
and greetings to Varvara Alexyevna, Varya, Natasha,
and Glyeb. I can fancy how Glyeb and Natasha have
grown. Now if only you would all come here for
Easter, I could have a look at you all. Don't forget
me, please, and don't be angry with me. I send you
my warmest good wishes. I press your hand heartily
and embrace you.

To G. I. ROSSOLIMO.

YALTA,
January 21, 1900.

DEAR GRIGORY IVANOVITCH,

... I send you in a registered parcel what
I have that seems suitable for children two stories of
the life of a dog. And I think I have nothing else of
the sort. I don't know how to write for children ; I
write for them once in ten years, and so-called chil-
dren's books I don't like and don't believe in. Chil-
,dren ought only to be given what is suitable also for
grown-up people. Andersen, "The Frigate Pal-
lada," Gogol, are easily read by children and also
by grown-up people. Books should not be written
for children, but one ought to know how to choose
from what has been written for grown-up people
that is, from real works of art. To be able to select
among drugs, and to administer them in suitable

380 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

doses, is more direct and consistent than trying t(
invent a special remedy for the patient because h<
is a child. Forgive the medical comparison. It's
in keeping with the moment, perhaps, as for the las
four days I have been occupied with medicine, doctor
ing my mother and myself. Influenza no doubt
Fever and headache.

If I write anything, I will let you know in due time
but anything I write can only be published by on
man Maiks! For anything published by anyom
else I have to pay a fine of 5,000 roubles (per signa
ture). . . .

To 0. L. KNIPPER.

YALTA,
January 22, 1900.

DEAR ACTRESS,

On January 17th I had telegrams from you]
mother and your brother, from your uncle Alexandi
Ivanovitch (signed Uncle Sasha), and from N. N
Sokolovsky. Be so good as to give them my warn
thanks and the expression of my sincere feeling foi
them.

Why don't you write? what has happened? Oi
are you already so fascinated? . . . Well, there is
no help for it. God be with you !

I am told that in May you will be in Yalta. If thai
is settled, why shouldn't you make inquiries before
hand about the theatre? The theatre here is let on
lease, and you could not get hold of it without nego
tiating with the tenant, Novikov the actor. If you
commission me to do so I would perhaps talk to hirr
about it.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 381

The 17th, my name-day and the day of my election
to the Academy, passed dingily and gloomily, as I
was unwell. Now I am better, but my mother is ail-
ing. And these little troubles completely took away
all taste and inclination for a name-day or election
to the Academy, and they, too, have hindered me from
writing to you and answering your telegram at the
proper time.

Mother is getting better now.

I see the Sredins at times. They come to see us,
and I go to them very, very rarely, but still I
do go. ...

So, then, you are not writing to me and not intend-
ing to write very soon either. ... X. 1 is to blame
for all that. I understand you !

I kiss your little hand.

To F. D. BATYUSHKOV.

YALTA,
January 24, 1900.

MUCH RESPECTED F. D.,

Roche asks me to send him the passages
from "Peasants" which were cut out by the Censor,
but there were no such passages. There is one
chapter which has not appeared in the magazine,
nor in the book. It was a conversation of the
peasants about religion and government. But there
is no need to send that chapter to Paris, as indeed
there was no need to translate "Peasants" into French
at all

I thank you most sincerely for the photograph;
Ryepin's illustration is an honour I had not expected
01 dreamed of. It will be very pleasant to have the

382 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

original ; tell Ilya Efimovitch * that I shall expect it
with impatience, and that he cannot change his mind
now, as I have already bequeathed the original to
the town of Taganrog in which, by the way, I was
born.

In your letter you speak of Gorky: how do you
like Gorky? I don't like eveiythmg he writes,
but there are things I like very, very much, and to
my mind there is not a shadow of doubt that Gorky
is made of the dough of which artists are made.
He is the real thing. He's a fine man, clever, think-
ing, and thoughtful. But there is a lot of unneces-
sary ballast upon him and in him for example, his
provincialism. . . .

Thanks very much for your letter, for remembering
me. I am dull here, I am sick of it, and I have a
feeling as though I have been thrown overboard.
And the weather's bad too, and I am not well. I still
go on coughing. All good wishes.

To M. 0. MENSHIKOV.

YALTA,
January 28, 1900.

... I can't make out what Tolstoy's illness is.
Tchennov has sent me no answer, and from what I
read in the papers and what you write me now I can
draw no conclusion. Ulcers in the stomach and
intestines would give different indications: they are
not present, or there have been a few bleeding wounds
caused by gall-stones which have passed and lacer-

* Ryepin, who was, at the request of Roche, the French
translator, illustrating the French edition of Chekhov's "Peas-
ants "

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 383

ated the walls. There is no cancer either. It
would have shown itself first in the appetite, in
the general condition, and above all the face would
have betrayed cancer if he had had it. The most
likely thing is that L. N. is in good health (apart
from the gall-stones), and will live another twenty
years. His illness frightened me, and kept me on
tenter-hooks. I am afraid of Tolstoy's death. If
he were to die there would be a big empty place in
my life. To begin with, because I have never loved
any man as much as him. I am not a believing
man, but of all beliefs I consider his the nearest
and most akin to me. Secondly, while Tolstoy is in
literature it is easy and pleasant to be a literary
man; even recognizing that one has done nothing
and never will do anything is not so dreadful, since
Tolstoy will do enough for all. His work is the
justification of the enthusiasms and expectations
built upon literature. Thirdly, Tolstoy takes a firm
stand, he has an immense authority, and so long
as he is alive, bad tastes in literature, vulgarity of
every kind, insolent and lachrymose, all the bristling,
exasperated vanities will be in the far background.,
in the shade. Nothing but his moral authority is
capable of maintaining a certain elevation in the
moods and tendencies of literature so called. With-
out him they would be a flock without a shepherd,
or a hotch-potch, in which it would be difficult to
discriminate anything.

To finish with Tolstoy, I have something to say
about "Resurrection," which I have read not piece-
meal, in parts, but as a whole, at one go. It is a
remarkable artistic production. The least interest-
ing part is all that is said of Nehludov's relations

384 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

with Katusha; and the most interesting the princes,
the generals, the aunts, the peasants, the convicts,
the warders. The scene in the house of the General
in command of the Peter-Paul Fortress, the spirit-
ualist, I read with a throbbing heart it is so good!
And Madame Kortchagin in the easy chair; and the
peasant, the husband of Fedosya ! The peasant calls
his grandmother "an artful one." That's just what
Tolstoy's pen is an artful one. There's no end to
the novel, what there is you can't call an end. To
write and write, and then to throw the whole weight
of it on a text from the Gospel, that is quite in the
theological style. To settle it all by a text from the
Gospel is as arbitrary as dividing the convicts into
five classes. Why into five and not into ten? He
must make us believe in the Gospel, in its being the
truth, and then settle it all by texts.

. . . They write about Tolstoy as old women
talk about a crazy saint, all sorts of unctuous
nonsense; it's a mistake for him to talk to those
people. . . .

They have elected Tolstoy * against the grain.
According to notions there, he is a Ni'hilist. Any-
way, that's what he was called by a lady, the wife
of an actual privy councillor, and I heartily congratu-
late him upon it. ...

To L. S. MIZINOV.

YALTA,
January 29, 1900.

DEAR LIKA,

They have written to me that you have grown
very fat and become dignified, and I did not expect
that you would remember me and write to me.

* An honorary Academician.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 385

But you have remembered me and thank you very
much for it, dear. You write nothing about your
health: evidently it's not bad, and I am glad. I hope
your mother is well and that everything is going on
all right. I am nearly well; I am ill from time to
time, but not often, and only because I am old the
bacilli have nothing to do with it. And when I see
a lovely woman now I smile in an aged way, and drop
my lower lip that's all.

*

Lika, I am dreadfully bored in Yalta. My life
does not run or flow, but crawls along. Don't forget
me; write to me now and then, anyway. In your
letters just as in your life you are a very interesting
woman. I press your hand warmly.

To GORKY.

YALTA,
February 3, 1900

DEAR ALEXEY MAXIMOVITCH,

Thank you for your letter, for the lines about
Tolstoy and about "Uncle Vanya," which I haven't
seen on the stage ; thanks altogether for not forgetting
me. Here in this blessed Yalta one could hardly
keep alive without letters. The idleness, the idiotic
winter with the temperature always above freezing-
point, the complete absence of interesting women, the
pig-faces on the sea-front all this may spoil a man
and wear him out in a very short time. I am tired
of it; it seems to me as though the winter had been
going on for ten years.

You have pleurisy. If so, why do you stay on in
Nizhni. Why? What do you want with that

386 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

Nizhni, by the way? What glue keeps you sticking
to that town ? If you like Moscow, as you write, why
don't you live in Moscow? In Moscow there are
theatres and all the rest of it, and, what matteis most
of all, Moscow is handy for going abroad ; while living
in Nizhni you'll stick in Nizhni, and never go further
than Vasilsursk. You want to see more, to know
more, to have a wider range. Your imagination is
quick to seize and hold, but it is like a big oven which
is not provided with fuel enough. One feels this
in general, and in particular in the stories : you pre-
sent two or three figures in a story, but these figures
stand apart, outside the mass; one sees that these
figures are living in your imagination, but only these
figures the mass is not grasped. I except from this
criticism your Crimean things (for instance, "My
Travelling Companion"), in which, besides the
figures, there is a feeling of the human mass out of
which they have come, and atmosphere and back-
ground everything, in fact. See what a lecture I
am giving you and all that you may not go on stay-
ing in Nizhni. You are a young man, strong and
tough ; if I were you I should make a tour in India and
all sorts of places. I would take my degree in two or
more faculties I would, yes, I would! You laugh,
but I do feel so badly treated at being forty already,
at having asthma and all sorts of horrid things which
prevent my living freely. Anyway, be a good fellow
and a good comrade, and don't be angry with me for
preaching at you like a head priest.

Write to me. I look forward to "Foma Gorde-
yev," which I haven't yet read properly.

There is no news. Keep well, I press your hand
warmly.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 387

To 0. L. KNIPPER.

YALTA,
February 10, 1900.

DEAR ACTRESS,

The winter is very cold, I am not well, no one
has written to me for nearly a whole month and
I had made up my mind that there was nothing left
for me but to go abroad, where it is not so dull; but
now it has begun to be warmer, and it's better, and
I have decided that I shall go abroad only at the end
of the summer, for the exhibition.

And you, why are you depressed? What are you
depressed about? You are living, working, hoping,
drinking ; you laugh when your uncle reads aloud to
you what more do you want? I am a different
matter, I am torn up by the roots, I am not living
a full life, I don't drink, though I am fond of drink-
ing; I love noise and don't hear it in fact, I am in
the condition of a transplanted tree which is hesitat-
ing whether to take root or to begin to wither. If I
sometimes allow myself to complain of boredom, I
have some grounds for doing so but you? And
Meierhold is complaining of the dulness of his life
too. Aie, aie!

By the way, about Meierhold he ought to spend
the whole summer in the Crimea. His health needs
it. Only it must be for the whole summer.

Well, now I am all right again. I am doing
nothing because I intend to set to work. I dig in
the garden. You write that for you, little people,
the future is wrapped in mystery. I had a letter
from your chief Nemirovitch not long ago. He
writes that the company is going to be in Sevastopol,

388 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

then in Yalta at the beginning of May: in Yalta there
will be five performances, then evening rehearsals.
Only the precious members of the company will
remain for the rehearsals, the others can have a holi-
day where they please. I trust that you are precious.
To the director you are precious, to the author you
are priceless. There is a pun for a titbit for you.
I won't write another word to you till you send me
your portrait.

Thank you for your good wishes in regard to my
marriage. I have informed my -fiancee of your
design of coming to Yalta in order to cut her out a
little. She said that if "that horrid woman"
comes to Yalta, she will hold me tight in her embrace.
I observed that to be embraced for so long in hot
weather was not hygienic. She was offended and
grew thoughtful, as though she were trying to guess
in what surroundings I had picked up this fagon de
parler, and after a little while said that the theatre
was an evil and that my intention of writing no
more plays was extremely laudable and asked
me to kiss her. To this I replied that it was not
proper for me to be so free with my kisses now that
I am an academician. She burst into tears, and I
went away.

In the spring the company will be in Harkov too.
I will come and meet you then, only don't talk of
that to anyone. Nadyezhda Ivanovna has gone off
to Moscow.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 389

To A. S. SUVORIN.

YALTA,
February 12, 1900.

I have been racking my brains over your fourth act,
and have come to no conclusion except, perhaps, that
you must not end it up with Nihilists. It's too tur-
bulent and screaming; a quiet, lyrical, touching end-
ing would be more in keeping with your play. When
your heroine begins to grow old without arriving at
anything or deciding anything for herself, and sees
that she is forsaken by all, that she is uninteresting
and superfluous, when she understands that the peo-
ple around her were idle, useless, bad people (her
father too) , and that she has let her life slip is not
that more dreadful than the Nihilists?

Your letters about "The Russalka" and Korsh are
very good. The tone is brilliant, and they are won-
derfully written. But about Konovalov and the
jury, I think you ought not to have written, however
alluring the subject. Let A t write as much as
he likes about it, but not you, for it is not your affair.
To treat such questions boldly and with conviction,
one must be a man with a single purpose, while you
would go off at a tangent halfway through the letter
as you have done saying suddenly that we all
sometimes desire to kill someone, and desire the
death of our neighbours. When a daughter-in-law
feels sick and tired of an invalid mother-in-law, a
spiteful old woman, she, the daughter-in-law, feels
easier at the thought that the old woman will soon
die : but that's not desiring her death, but weariness,
an exhausted spirit, vexation, longing for peace.
If that daughter-in-law were ordered to kill the old

390 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

woman, she would sooner kill herself, whatever desire
might have heen brooding in her heart.

Why, of course jurymen may make a mistake, but
what of that? It does happen by mistake that help is
given to the well-fed instead of to the hungry, but
whatever you write on that subject, you will reach
no result but harm to the hungry. Whether from
our point of view the jury are mistaken or not mis-
taken, we ought to recognize that in each individual
case they form a conscious judgment and make an
effort to do so conscientiously; and if a captain steers
his steamer conscientiously, continually consulting
the chart and the compass, and if the steamer is ship-
wrecked all the same, would it not be more correct
to put down the shipwreck not to the captain, but to
something else for instance, to think that the chart
is out of date or that the bottom of the sea has
changed? Yes, there are three points the jury have
to take into consideration: (1) Apart from the
criminal law, the penal code and legal procedure,
there is a moral law which is always in advance of the
established law, and which defines our actions pre-
cisely when we try to act on our conscience; thus,
for instance, the heritage of a daughter is laid down
by law as a seventh part. But you, acting on the
dictates of purely moral principle, go beyond the law
and in opposition to it, and bequeath her the same
share as your sons, for you know that to act other-
wise would be acting against your conscience. In
the same way it sometimes happens to the jury to
be put in a position in which they feel that their
conscience is not satisfied by the established law, tliat
in the case they are judging there are fine shades and
subtleties which cannot be brought under the pro-

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 391

visions of the penal code, and that obviously some-
thing else is needed for a just judgment, and that for
the lack of that "something" they will be forced to
give a judgment in which something is lacking. (2)
The jury know that acquittal is not pardon, and that
acquittal does not deliver the prisoner from the day
of judgment in the other world, from the judgment
of his conscience, from the judgment of public
opinion ; they decide the question only so far as it is

a judicial question, and leave A 1 to decide

whether it is good to kill children or bad. (3) The
prisoner comes to the court already exhausted by
prison and examination, and he is in an agonizing
position at his trial, so that even if he is acquitted he
does not leave the court unpunished.

Well, be that as it may, my letter is almost finished,
and I seem to have written nothing. We have the
spring here in Yalta, no news of interest. . . .

"Resurrection" is a remarkable novel. I liked it
very much, but it ought to be read straight off at
one sitting. The end is uninteresting and false
false in a technical sense.

To 0. L. KNIPPER.

YALTA,
February 14, 1900.

DEAR ACTRESS,

The photographs are very, very good,
especially the one in which you are leaning in dejec-
tion with your elbows on the back of a chair, which
gives you a discreetly mournful, gentle expression
under which there lies hid a little demon. The other
is good too, but it looks a little like a Jewess, a very
musical person who attends a conservatoire, but at the

392 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

same time is studying dentistry on the sly as a second
string, and is engaged to be married to a young man in
Mogilev, and whose fiance is a person like M
Are you angry? Really, really angry? It's my
revenge for your not signing them.

Of the seventy roses I planted in the autumn only
three have not taken root. Lilies, irises, tulips,
tuberoses, hyacinths, are all pushing out of the
ground. The willow is already green. By the
little seat in the corner the grass is luxuriant already.
The almond-tree is in blossom. I have put little
seats all over the garden, not grand ones with iron
legs, but wooden ones which I paint green. I have
made three bridges over the stream. I am planting
palms. In fact, there are all sorts o'f novelties, so
much so that you won't know the house, or the gar-
den, or the street. Only the owner has not changed,
he is just the same moping creature and devoted wor-
shipper of the talents that reside at Nikitsky Gate.*
I have heard no music nor singing since the autumn,
I have not seen one interesting woman. How can I
help being melancholy?

I had made up my mind not to write to you, but
since you have sent the photographs I have taken off
the ban, and here you see I am writing. I will even
come to Sevastopol, only I repeat, don't tell that to
anyone, especially not to Vishnevsky. I shall be
there incognito, I shall put myself down in the hotel-
book Count Blackphiz.

I was joking when I said that you were like a
Jewess in your photograph. Don't be angry,
precious one. Well, herewith I kiss your little hand,
and remain unalterably yours.

* 0. L. Knipper was living at Nikitsky Gate

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 393

To GORKY.

YALTA,
February 15, 1900.

DEAR ALEXEY MAXIMOVITCH,

Your article in the Nizhni-Novgorod Listok
was balm to my soul. What a talented person you
are! I can't write anything but belles-lettres, you
possess the pen of a journalist as well. I thought at
first I liked the article so much because you praise
me in it; afterwards it came out that Sredin and his
family and Yartsev were all delighted with it. So
peg away at journalism. God bless you!

Why don't they send me "Foma Gordeyev"? I
have read it only in bits, and one ought to read it
straight through at a sitting as I have just read
"Resurrection." Except the relations of Nehludov
and Katusha, which are somewhat obscure and made
up, everything in the novel made the impression of
strength, richness, and breadth, and the insincerity
of a man afraid of death and refusing to admit it and
clutching at texts and holy Scripture.

Write to them to send me "Foma."

"Twenty-six Men and a Girl" is a good story.
There is a strong feeling of the environment. One
smells the hot rolls. .

They have just brought your letter. So you don't
want to go to India? That's a pity. When India
is in the past, a long sea voyage, you have something
to think about when you can't get to sleep. And a
tour abroad takes very little time, it need not prevent
your going about in Russia on foot.

I am bored, not in the sense of weltschmerz, not
in the sense of being weary of existence, but simply

394 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

bored from want of people, from want of music which
I love, and from want of women, of whom there are
none in Yalta. I am bored without caviare and
pickled cabbage.

I am very sorry that apparently you have given up
the idea of coming to Yalta. The Art Theatre from
Moscow will be here in May. It will give five per-
formances and then remain for rehearsals. So you
come, study the stage at the rehearsals, and then in
five to eight days write a play, which I should welcome
joyfully with my whole heart.

Yes, I have the right now to insist on the fact that
I am forty, that I am a man no longer young. I used
to be the youngest literary man, but you have ap-
peared on the scene and I became more dignified at
once, and no one calls me the youngest now.

To V. A. POSSE.

YALTA,
February 15, 1900.

MUCH RESPECTED VLADIMIR ALEXANDROVITCH,

"Foma Gordeyev" and in a superb binding
too is a precious and touching present; I thank you
from the bottom of my heart. A thousand thanks!
I have read "Foma" only in bits, now I shall read
it properly. Gorky should not be published in parts ;
either he must write more briefly, or you must put
him in whole as the Vyestnik Evropy does with
Boborykin. "Foma," by the way, is very successful,
but only with intelligent well-read people with the
young also. I once overheard in a garden the con-
versation of a lady (from Petersburg) with her daugh-
ter: the mother was abusing the book, the daughter
was praising it. ...

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 395

YALTA,
February 29, 1900.

"Foma Gordeyev" is written all in one tone like
a dissertation. All the characters speak alike, and
their way of thinking is alike too. They all speak
not simply but intentionally; they all have some idea
in the background; as though there is something they
know they don't speak out: but in reality there is
nothing they know, and it is simply their fagon de
parler.

There are wonderful passages in "Foma." Gorky
will make a very great writer if only he does not
weary, does not grow cold and lazy.

To A. S. SUVORIN.

YALTA,
March 10, 1900.

No winter has ever dragged on so long for me as
this one, and time merely drags and does not move,
and now I realize how stupid it was of me to leave
Moscow. I have lost touch with the north without
getting into touch with the south, and one can think
of nothing in my position but to go abroad. After
the spring, winter has begun here again in Yalta
snow, rain, cold, mud simply disgusting.

The Moscow Art Theatre will be in Yalta in April;
it will bring its scenery and decorations. All the
tickets for the four days advertised were sold in one
day, although the prices have been considerably
raised. They will give among other things Haupt-
mann's "Lonely Lives," a magnificent play in my
opinion. I read it with great pleasure, although I

396 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

am not fond of plays, and the production at the Art
Theatre they say is marvellous.

There is no news. There is one great event,
though: N.'s "Socrates" is printed in the Neva Sup-
plement. I have read it, but with great effort. It is
not Socrates but a dull-witted, captious, opinionated
man, the whole of whose wisdom and interest is con-
fined to tripping people up over words. There is
not a trace or vestige of talent in it, but it is quite pos-
sible that the play might be successful because there
are words in it such as "amphora," and Karpov says
it would stage well.

How many consumptives there are here! What
poverty, and how worried one is with them! The
hotels and lodging-houses here won't take in
those who are seriously ill. You can imagine
the awful cases that may be seen here. People
are dying from exhaustion, from their surround-
ings, from complete neglect, and this in blessed
Taurida !

One loses all relish for the sun and the sea. . . ,

To 0. L. KNIPPER.

YALTA,
March 26, 1900

There is a feeling of black melancholy about your
letter, dear actress ; you are gloomy, you are fearfully
unhappy but not for long, one may imagine, as
soon, very soon, you will be sitting in the train, eating
your lunch with a very good appetite. It is very nice
that you are coming first with Masha before all the
others; we shall at least have time to talk a little,

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 397

walk a little, see things, drink and eat. But please
don't bring with you . . .

I haven't a new play, it's a lie of the newspapers.
The newspapers never do tell the truth about me.
If I did begin a play, of course the first thing I should
do would be to inform you of the fact.

There is a great wind here; the spring has not be-
gun properly yet, but we go about without our
goloshes and fur caps. The tulips will soon be out.
I have a nice garden but it is untidy, moss-grown a
dilettante garden.

Gorky is here. He is warm in his praises of you
and your theatre. I will introduce you to him.

Oh dear! Someone has arrived. A visitor has
come in. Good-bye for now, actress !

To HIS SISTER.

YALTA,
March 26, 1900.

DEAR MASHA,

. . . There is no news, there is no water in
the pipes either. I am sick to death of visitors. Yes-
terday, March 25, they came in an incessant stream
all day; doctors keep sending people from Moscow
and the provinces with letters asking me to find lodg-
ings, to "make arrangements," as though I were a
house-agent! Mother is well. Mind you keep well
too, and make haste and come home.

398 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV ,

To 0. L. KNIPPER.

YALTA,
May 20, 1900.

Greetings to you, dear enchanting actress! How
are you? How are you feeling? I was very unwell
on the way back to Yalta.* I had a bad headache
and temperature before I left Moscow. I was wicked
enough to conceal it from you, now I am all right.

How is Levitan? I feel dreadfully worried at not
knowing. If you have heard, please write to me.

Keep well and be happy. I heard Masha was
sending you a letter, and so I hasten to write these
few lines.

To HIS SISTER.

YALTA,
September 9, 1900.

DEAR MASHA,

I answer the letter in which you write about
Mother. To my thinking it would be better for her
to go to Moscow now in the autumn and not after
December. She will be tired of Moscow and pining
for Yalta in a month, you know, and if you take her
to Moscow in the autumn she will be back in Yalta
before Christmas. That's how it seems to me,
but possibly I am mistaken; in any case you must
take into consideration that it is much drearier in

* Chekhov went to Moscow with the Art Theatre Company on
their return from Yalta.

f Chekhov's later letters to L Knipper have not been pub-
lished

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 399

Yalta before Christinas than it is after infinitely
drearier.

Most likely I will be in Moscow after the 20th of
September, and then we will decide. From Moscow
I shall go I don't know where first to Paris, and
then probably to Nice, from Nice to Africa. I shall
hang on somehow to the spring, all April or May,
when I shall come to Moscow again.

There is no news. There's no rain either, every-
thing is dried up. At home here it is quiet, peaceful,
satisfactory, and of course dull.

"Three Sisters" is very difficult to write, more dif-
ficult than my other plays. Oh well, it doesn't mat-
ter, perhaps something will come of it, next season
if not this. It's very hard to write in Yalta, by the
way: I am interrupted, and I feel as though I had no
object in writing; what I wrote yesterday I don't like
to-day. . . .

Well, take care of yourself.

My humblest greetings to Olga Leonardovna, to
Vishnevsky, and all the rest of them too.

If Gorky is in Moscow, tell him that I have sent a
letter to him in Nizhni-Novgorod.

To GORKY.

YALTA,
October 16, 1900.

DEAR ALEXEY MAXIMOVITCH,

. . . On the 21st of this month I am going to
Moscow, and from there abroad. Can you imagine
I have written a play; but as it will be produced not

400 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

now, but next season, I have not made a fair copy
of it yet. It can lie as it is. It was very difficult
to write "Three Sisters." Three heroines, you see,
each a separate type and all the daughters of a
general. The action is laid in a provincial town,
as it might be Perm, the surroundings military,
artillery.

The weather in Yalta is exquisite and fresh, my
health is improving. I don't even want to go away
to Moscow. I am working so well, and it is so pleas-
ant to be free from the irritation I suffered from all the
summer. I am not coughing, and am even eating
meat. I am living alone, quite alone. My mother
is in Moscow.

Thanks for your letters, my dear fellow, thanks
very much. I read them over twice. My warmest
greetings to your wife and Maxim. And so, till we
meet in Moscow. I hope you won't play me false,
and we shall see each other.

God keep you.

Moscow,
October 22, 1901.

Five days have passed since I read your play
("The Petty Bourgeois")- I have not written to
you till now because I could not get hold of the
fourth act; I have kept waiting for it, and I still
have not got it. And so I have only read three acts,
but that I think is enough to judge of the play. It
is, as I expected, very good, written a la Gorky,
original, very interesting; and, to begin by talking
of the defects, I have noticed only one, a defect
incorrigible as red hair in a red-haired man the
conservatism of the form. You make new and

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 401

original people sing new songs to an accompani-
ment that looks second-hand, you have four acts,
the characters deliver edifying discourses, there is
a feeling of alarm before long speeches, and so on,
and so on. But all that is not important, and it is
all, so to speak, drowned in the good points of the
play. Pertchihin how living! His daughter is
enchanting, Tatyana and Pyotr are also, and their
mother is a splendid old woman. The central figure
of the play, Nil, is vigorously drawn and extremely
interesting! In fact, the play takes hold of one
from the first act. Only God preserve you from let-
ting anyone act Pertchihin except Artyom, while
Alexeyev-Stanislavsky must certainly play Nil.
Those two figures will do just what's needed; Pyotr
Meierhold. Only Nil's part, a wonderful part,
must be made two or three times as long. You ought
to end the play with it, to make it the leading part.
Only do not contrast him with Pyotr and Tatyana.
let him be by himself and them by themselves, all
wonderful, splendid people independently of each
other. When Nil tries to seem superior to Pyotr and
Tatyana, and says of himself that he is a fine fellow,
the element so characteristic of our decent working
man, the element of modesty, is lost. He boasts, he
argues, but you know one can see what sort of man
he is without that. Let him be merry, let him play
pranks through the whole four acts, let him eat a
great deal after his work and that will be enough
for him to conquer the audience with. Pyotr, I re-
peat, is good. Most likely you don't even suspect
how good he is. Tatyana, too, is a finished figure,
only (a) she ought really to be a schoolmistress,
ought to be teaching children, ought to come home

402 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

from school, ought to be taken up with her pupils
and exercise-books, and (6) it ought to be mentioned
in the first or second act that she has attempted to
poison herself; then, after that hint, the poisoning
in the third act will not seem so startling and will
be more in place. Teterev talks too much: such
characters ought to be shown bit by bit between
others, for in any case such people are everywhere
merely incidental both in life and on the stage.
Make Elena dine with all the rest in the first act, let
her sit and make jokes, or else there is very little of
her, and she is not clear. Her avowal to Pyotr is too
abrupt, on the stage it would come out in too high
relief. Make her a passionate woman, if not loving
at least apt to fall in love. . . .

July 29, 1902.

I have read your play.* It is new and unmistak-
ably fine. The second act is very good, it is the best,
the strongest, and when I was reading it, especially
the end, I almost danced with joy. The tone is
gloomy, oppressive; the audience unaccustomed to
such subjects will walk out of the theatre, and you
may well say good-bye to your reputation as an
optimist in any case. My wife will play Vassilisa,
the immoral and spiteful woman; Vishnevsky walks
about the house and imagines himself the Tatar
he is convinced that it is the part for him. Luka,
alas ! you must not give to Artyom. He will repeat
himself in that part and be exhausted; but he would
do the policeman wonderfully, it is his part. The
part of the actor, in which you have been very suc-
cessful (it is a magnificent part) , should be given to
* "In the Depths."

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 403

an. experienced actor, Stanislavsky perhaps. Katch-
alev will play the baron.

You have left out of the fourth act all the most
interesting characters (except the actor), and you
must mind now that there is no ill effect from it.
The act may seem boring and unnecessary, especially
if, with the exit of the strongest and most interesting
actors, there are left only the mediocrities. The
death of the actor is awful; it is as though you gave the
spectator a sudden box on the ear apropos of nothing
without preparing him in any way. How the baron
got into the doss-house and why he is a baron is also
not sufficiently clear.

* *

Andreyev's "Thought" is something pretentious,
difficult to understand, and apparently no good, but
it is worked out with talent. Andreyev has no sim-
plicity, and his talent reminds me of an artificial night-
ingale. Skitalets now is a sparrow, but he is a real
living sparrow. . . .

To S. P. DYAGILEV.

YALTA,
December 30, 1902.

. . . You write that we talked of a serious
religious movement in Russia. We talked of a
movement not in Russia but in the intellectual
class. I won't say anything about Russia; the in-
tellectuals so far are only playing at religion, and for
the most part from having nothing to do. One may
say of the cultured part of our public that it has

404 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

moved away from religion, and is moving further and
further away from it, whatever people may say and
however many philosophical and religious societies
may be formed. Whether it is a good or a bad thing
I cannot undertake to decide; I will only say that
the religious movement of which you write is one
thing, and the whole trend of modern culture is an-
other, and one cannot place the second in any causal
connection with the first. Modern culture is only the
first beginning of work for a great future, work which
will perhaps go on for tens of thousands of years,
in order that man may if only in the remote future
come to know the truth of the real God that is not,
I conjecture, by seeking in Dostoevsky, but by clear
knowledge, as one knows twice two are four. Mod-
ern culture is the first beginning of the work, while
the religious movement of which we talked is a sur-
vival, almost the end of what has ceased, or is ceasing
tc exist. But it is a long story, one can't put it all
into a letter. . . .

To A. S. SUVORIN.

Moscow,
June 29, 1903.

. . . One feels a warm sympathy, of course, for
Gorky's letter about the Kishinev pogrom, as one does
for everything he writes; the letter is not written
though, but put together, there is neither youthful-
ness in it nor confidence, like Tolstoy's.

******

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 405

July 1, 1903.

You are reading belles-lettres now, so read
Veresaev's stories. Begin with a little story in the
second volume called "Lizar." I think you will be
very much pleased with it. Veresaev is a doctor; I
have got to know him lately. He makes a very good
impression. . . .

To S. P. DYAGILEV.

YALTA,
July 12, 1903

... I have been thinking over your letter for a
long time, and alluring as your suggestion or offer
is, yet in the end I must answer it as neither you nor
I would wish.

I cannot be the editor of The World of Art, as I
cannot live in Petersburg, . . . that's the first point.
And the second is that just as a picture must be painted
by one artist and a speech delivered by one orator,
so a magazine must be edited by one man. Of course
I am not a critic, and I dare say I shouldn't make a
very good job of the reviews; but on the other hand,
how could I get on in the same boat with Merezhkov-
sky, who definitely believes, didactically believes,
while I lost my faith years ago and can only look with
perplexity at any "intellectual" who does believe? I
respect Merezhkovsky, and think highly of him both
as a man and as a writer, but we should be pulling in
opposite directions. . . .

Don't be cross with me, dear Sergey Pavlovitch:
it seems to me that if you go on editing the magazine

406 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV .

for another five years you will come to agree with
me. A magazine, like a picture or a poem, must bear
the stamp of one personality and one will must be
felt in it. This has been hitherto the case in the
World of Art, and it was a good thing. And it must
be kept up. . . .

To K. S. STANISLAVSKY.

YALTA,
July 28, 1903

... My play "The Cherry Orchard" is not yet
finished; it makes slow progress, which I put down
to laziness, fine weather, and the difficulty of the sub-
ject. . . .

I think your part * is all right, though I can't un-
dertake to decide, as I can judge very little of a play
by reading it. ...

To MADAME STANISLAVSKY.

YALTA,
September 15, 1903.

. . . Don't believe anybody no living soul has
read my play yet; I have written for you not the
part of a "canting hypocrite," but of a very nice
girl, with which you will, I hope, be satisfied. I
have almost finished the play, but eight or ten days
ago I was taken ill, with coughing and weakness
in fact, last year's business over again. Now that
is to-day it is warmer and I feel better, but still I

* Stanislavsky acted Lopahin Translator's Note.

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 407

cannot write, as my head is aching. Olga will not
bring the play; I will send the four acts together as
soon as it is possible for me to set to work for a whole
day. It has tuined out not a drama, but a comedy,
in parts a farce, indeed, and I am afraid I shall catch
it from Vladimir Ivanitch *. . . .

I can't come for the opening of your season, I must
stay in Yalta till November. Olga, who has grown
fatter and stronger in the summer, will probably
come to Moscow on Sunday. I shall remain alone,
and of course shall take advantage of that. As a
writer it is essential for me to observe women, to
study them, and so, I regret to say, I cannot be a
faithful husband. As I observe women chiefly for
the sake of my plays, in my opinion the Art Theatre
ought to increase my wife's salary or give her a pen-
sion! . . .

To K. S. STANISLAVSKY.

YALTA,
October 30, 1903.

. . . Many thanks for your letter and telegram.
Letters are very precious to me now in the first
place, because I am utterly alone here; and in the
second, because I sent the play three weeks ago and
only got your letter yesterday, and if it were not
for my wife, I should know nothing at all and might
imagine any mortal thing. When I was writing
Lopahin, I thought of it as a part for you. If for any
reason you don't care for it, take the part of Gaev.
Lopahin is a merchant, of course, but he is a very

* Nemirovitch Dantchenko.

408 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

decent person in eveiy sense. He must behave with
perfect decorum, like an educated man, with no
petty ways or tricks of any sort, and it seemed to
me this part, the central one of the play, would come
out brilliantly in your hands. ... In choosing an
actor for the part you must remember that Varya,
a serious and religious girl, is in love with Lopahin,
she wouldn't be in love with a mere money-grub-
ber. . . .

To V. I. NEMIROVITCH DANTCHENKO.

YALTA,
November 2, 1903.

. . . About the play.

1. Anya can be played by anyone you like, even
by a quite unknown actress, so long as she is young
and looks like a girl, and speaks in a youthful singing
voice. It is not an important part.

(2) Varya is a more serious part. . . . She is a
character in a black dress, something of a nun, fool-
ish, tearful, etc.

. . . Gorky is younger than you or I, he has his
life before him. ... As for the Nizhni theatre,
tnat's a mere episode; Gorky will try it, "sniff it and
reject it." And while we are on this subject, the
whole idea of a "people's" theatre and "people's"
literature is foolishness and lollipops for the people.
We mustn't bring Gogol down to the people but raise
the people up to Gogol. . . .

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 409

To A. L. VlSHNEVSKY.

YALTA,
November 7, 1903

... As I am soon coming to Moscow, please keep
a ticket for me for "The Pillars of Society"; I want
to see the marvellous Norwegian acting, and I will
even pay for my seat. You know Ibsen is my fav-
ourite writer. . . .

To K. S. STANISLAVSKY.

YALTA,
November 10, 1903.

DEAR KONSTANTIN SERGEYITCH,

Of course the scenery for III. and IV. can be
the same, the hall and the staircase. Please do just
as you like about the scenery, I leave it entirely to
you; I am amazed and generally sit with my mouth
wide open at your theatre. There can be no question
about it, whatever you do will be excellent, a hundred
times better than anything I could invent. . . .

To F. D. BATYUSHKOV.

Moscow,
January 19, 1904

... At the first performance of "The Cherry
Orchard" on the 17th of January, they gave me an
ovation, so lavish, warm, and really so unexpected,
that I can't get over it even now. . . .

410 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

To MADAME AVILOV.

Moscow,
February 14, 1904.

. . . All good wishes. Above all, be cheerful;
don't look at life so much as a problem it is, most
likely, far simpler. And whether it life, of which
we know nothing is worth all the agonizing reflec-
tions which wear out our Russian wits, is a question.

To FATHER SERGEY SHTCHUKIN.

Moscow,
May 27, 1904.

DEAR FATHER SERGEY,

Yesterday I talked to a veiy well-known
lawyer about the case in which you are interested,
and I will tell you his opinion. Let Mr. N. imme-
diately put together all the necessary documents, let
his fiancee do the same, and go off to another prov-
ince, such as Kherson, and there get married. When
they are married let them come home and live
quietly, saying nothing about it. It is not a crime
(there is no consanguinity), but only a breach of a
long established tradition. If in another two or
three years someone informs against them, or finds
out and interferes, and the case is brought into court,
anyway the children would be legitimate. And
when there is a lawsuit (a trivial one anyway) , then
they can send in a petition to the Sovereign. The
Sovereign does not sanction what is forbidden by law
(so it is no use to petition for permission for the

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 411

marriage), but the Sovereign enjoys the fullest
privilege of pardon and does as a rule pardon what is
inevitable.

I don't know whether I am putting it properly.
You must forgive me, I am in bed, ill, and have been
since the second of May, I have not been able to
get up once all this time. I cannot execute your
other commissions. . . .

To HIS SISTER.

BERLIN,
Sunday, June 6, 1904

... I write to you from Berlin, where I have
been now for twenty-four hours. It turned very cold
in Moscow after you went away; we had snow, and
it was most likely through that that I caught cold.
I began to have rheumatic pains in my arms and legs,
I did not sleep for nights, got very thin, had injec-
tions of morphia, took thousands of medicines of all
sorts, and remember none of them with gratitude ex-
cept heroin, which was once prescribed me by
Altschuller. . . .

On Thursday I set off for foreign parts, very thin,
with very lean skinny legs. We had a good and
pleasant journey. Here in Berlin we have taken a
comfortable room in the. best hotel. I am enjoying
being here, and it is a long time since I have eaten so
well, with such appetite. The bread here is won-
derful, I eat too much of it. The coffee is excellent
and the dinners beyond description. Anyone who
has not been abroad does not know what good bread
means. There is no decent tea here (we have our

412 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

own), there are no hors d'oeuvres, but all the lest is
magnificent, though cheaper than with us. I am al-
ready the better for it, and to-day I even took a long
drive in the Thiergarten, though it was cool. And
so tell Mother and everyone who is interested that I
am getting better, or indeed have already got better ;
my legs no longer ache, I have no diarrhoea, I am
beginning to get fat, and am all day long on my legs,
not lying down. . . .

BERLIN,
June 8.

. . . The worst thing here which catches the eye
at once is the dress of the ladies. Fearfully bad
taste, nowhere do women dress so abominably, with
such utter lack of taste. I have not seen one beau-
tiful woman, nor one who was not trimmed with some
kind of absurd braid. Now I understand why taste
is so slowly developed in Germans in Moscow. On
the other hand, here in Berlin life is very comfortable.
The food is good, things are not dear, the horses are
well fed the dogs, who are here harnessed to little
carts, are well fed too. There is order and cleanli-
ness in the streets. . . .

BADENWEILER,

June 12.

I have been for three days settled here, this
is my address Germany, Badenweiler, Villa Freder-
icke. This Villa Fredericke, like all the houses and
villas here, stands apart in a luxuriant garden in
the sun, which shines and warms us till seven o'clock
in the evening (after which I go indoors) . We are
boarding in the house; for fourteen or sixteen marks

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 413

a day we have a double room flooded with sunshine,
with washing-stands, bedsteads, etc., with a writing-
table, and, best of all, with excellent water, like
Seltzer water. The general impression: a big gar-
den, beyond the garden, mountains covered with
forest, few people, little movement in the street.
The garden and the flowers are splendidly cared for.
But to-day, apropos of nothing, it has begun raining;
I sit in our room, and already begin to feel that in
another two or three days I shall be thinking of how
to escape.

I am still eating butter in enormous quantities and
with no effect. I can't take milk. The doctor here,
Schworer, married to a Moscow woman, turns out to
be skilful and nice.

We shall perhaps return to Yalta by sea from
Trieste or some other port. Health is coming back
to me not by ounces but by stones. Anyway, I have
learned here how to feed. Coffee is forbidden to me
absolutely, it is supposed to be relaxing; I am begin-
ning by degrees to eat eggs. Oh, how badly the Ger-
man women dress I

I live on the ground floor. If only you knew what
the sun is here! It does not scorch, but caresses.
I have a comfortable low chair in which I can sit or
lie down. I will certainly buy the watch, I haven t
forgotten it. How is Mother? Is she in good
spirits? Write to me. Give her my love. Olga is
going to a dentist here. . . .

June 16.

I am living amongst the Germans and have al-
ready g<* used'to my room and to the regnne but can
never get used to the German peace and quiet. Not

414 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV

a sound in the house or outside it; only at seven
o'clock in the morning and at midday there is an
expensive but very poor band playing in the gaiden.
One feels there is not a single drop of talent in any-
thing nor a single drop of taste; but, on the other
hand, there is order and honesty to spare. Our Rus-
sian life is far more talented, and as for the Italian
or the French, it is beyond comparison.

My health has improved. I don't notice now as I
go about that I am ill; my asthma is better, nothing
is aching. The only trace left of my illness is ex-
treme thinness; my legs are thin as they have never
been. The German doctors have turned all my life
upside down. At seven o'clock in the morning I
drink tea in bed for some reason it must be in bed;
at half-past seven a German by way of a masseur
comes and rubs me all over with water, and this seems
not at all bad. Then I have to he still a little, get
up at eight o'clock, drink acorn cocoa and eat an
immense quantity of butter. At ten o'clock, oatmeal
porridge, extremely nice to taste and to smell, not
like our Russian. Fresh air and sunshine. Read-
ing the newspaper. At one o'clock, dinner, at which
I must not taste everything but only the things Olga
chooses for me, according to the German doctor's
prescription. At four o'clock the cocoa again. At
seven o'clock supper. At bedtime a cup of straw-
berry tea that is as a sleeping draught. In all this
there is a lot of quackery, but a lot of what
is really good and useful for instance, the por-
ridge. I shall bring some oatmeal from here with
me. . . .

LETTERS OF CHEKHOV 415

June 21.

Things are going all right with me, only I have
begun to get sick of Badenweiler. There is so much
German peace and order here. It was different in
Italy. To-day at dinner they gave us boiled mutton
what a dish! The whole dinner is magnificent,
but the maitres d'hotel look so important that it makes
one uneasy.

June 28.

... It has begun to be terribly hot here. The
heat caught me unawares, as I have only winter
suits here. I am gasping and dreaming of getting
away. But where to go? I should like to go to
Italy, to Como, but everyone is running away from
the heat there. It is hot everywhere in the south
of Europe. I should like to go from Trieste to
Odessa by steamer, but I don't know how far it is
possible now, in June and July. . . . If it should
be rather hot it doesn't matter; I should have a
flannel suit. I confess I dread the railway journey.
It is stifling in the train now, particularly with my
asthma, which is made worse by the slightest thing.
Besides, there are no sleeping carriages from Vienna
right up to Odessa; it would be uncomfortable.
And we should get home by railway sooner than we
need, and I have not had enough holiday yet. It is
so hot one can't bear one's clothes, I don't know what
to do. Olga has gone to Freiburg to order a flannel
suit for me, there are neither tailors nor shoemakers
in Badenweiler. She has taken the suit Dushar made
me as a pattern.

I like the food here very much, but it does not
seem to suit me; my stomach is constantly being up-

416 LETTERS OF CHEKHOV -,

set. I can't eat the butter here. Evidently my di-
gestion is hopelessly ruined. It is scarcely possible
to cure it by anything but fasting that is, eating
nothing and that's the end of it. And the only
remedy for the asthma is not moving.

There is not a single decently dressed German
woman. The lack of taste makes one depressed.

Well, keep well and happy. My love to Mother,
Vanya, George, and all the rest. Write!

I kiss you and press your hand.

Yours,
A.

THE END

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